< 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, i 




Shelf a"B*.S 3 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



SANCTIFIED SPICE 

OR 

PUNGENT SEASONINGS FROM 
THE PULPIT 



by y 
MADISON C. PETERS 

PASTOR OF BLOOMINGDALE REFORMED CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY 
AND AUTHOR OF "EMPTY PEWS," "THE PATH OF GLORY," 
"POPULAR SINS," ETC., ETC. 



"and some of the sons of the priests made 
the ointment of the spices."— i. chron.,9: 30 



NEW YORK 
WILBUR B. KETCHAM 

2 COOPER UNION 



Copyright, 1893, 
By Wilbur B, Ketcham. 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 031421 



TO MY DEAR WIFE 
WHOSE CHEERFULNESS IS AN INSPIRATION 
I LOVINGLY DEDICATE THESE WORDS 



PBEFAOE. 



Edwaed Ikving published four discourses 
under the title of "Orations," giving as the 
reason that the very word " sermon " was in- 
dicative of dullness. We send forth these 
homely selections from our sermons, preludes, 
and Friday night talks under the title of 
" Sanctified Spice," because we believe that 
brightness, sarcasm and wit have a rightful 
place in the pulpit. Short sermons are in- 
sisted on by the taste of the day. Why this 
impatience of preaching? Is it not because 
sermons lack the things that glow, brighten, 
convince, subdue — "thoughts that breathe 
and words that burn " ? 

There may be some things in these pages 
that will cause you to smile. I have yet to 
learn that it is a greater sin to smile than to 
sleep in church, or that sinners will be at- 
tracted if the countenance be somber and the 
voice sepulchral. When we stand up in the 
pulpit we too often change our voices, and 
drone, cant, moan, croak and funeralize re- 

5 



6 



PREFACE. 



ligion with a countenance grave enough to 
break an undertaker's heart. 

That these words may further the cause of 
common sense, truth, righteousness, temper- 
ance, humanity, and of Christ, is the hope and 
the prayer of 

The Author. 

Bloomingdale Church Study, 
New York City. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. My Theology 9 

II. What is it to be a Christian? 12 

III. The Useful Woman 15 

IV. Enthusiasm 19 

V. The Church and the Stage 22 

VI. The Religion of Spooks 37 

VII. Fashion 44 

VIII. Thanksgiving Football 50 

IX. The Responsibilities of the Press 53 

X. What to teach a Boy 56 

XI. A Summer Day in Water Street 73 

XII. Palm-Tree Christians 82 

XIII. Some Samples from some Sample-Rooms 87 

XTV. Why we should serve Christ 94 

XV. Heresy Trials 96 

XVI. Spiritualism 99 

XVII. Companionship with Fools 103 

XVLII. Race-Track Gambling 106 

XIX. Municipal Reform a Patriotic Duty 109 

vii 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XX. Peotestantism in New York City 114 

XXI. Let not your Angry Passions rise 118 

XXII. Is there a Hell? 122 

XXIII. The Tenement House Problem 125 

XXIV. The War on our Sabbath 129 

XXV. Self-Assertion 135 

XXVI. Gamblers and Gambling 138 

XXVII. Wanted— Honest Men 110 

XXVIII. The Sweetest Eevenge 145 

XXIX. Funeral Eeporm 149 

XXX. Dancing 152 

XXXI. The Deadly Cigarette 155 

XXXII. The Bridal Scene at Cana 160 

XXXIII. No Foreign Flags on City Hall 165 

XXXIV. Getting on in the World 167 

XXXV. Get-Eich-Quick Schemes 170 

XXXVI. Wedding Presents 172 

XXXVII. Police Matrons 174 

XXXVIII. Strictures on Strikes 178 

XXXIX. Tobacco the Foe of Woman 182 

XL. Our White Slaves 185 

XLI. The Poor Children of New York 191 

XLII. Dr. Briggs's Acquittal 194 

XLIII. A Triumph for Americanism 198 

XLIV. Shafts at Eandom Sent 202 



I. 



MY THEOLOGY. 

While I have broken away from slavery 
to ecclesiastical traditions and customs, let it 
be distinctly understood that I am trying to 
build up here a distinctively Christian church. 
These consecrated walls shall resound only 
with evangelical truth. This holy place will 
be the witness only of worship that is pure 
and of doctrine that is sound. My theology 
is spelled in six letters, C-h-r-i-s-t, Christ, but 
not Christ as the center of a mere theology, 
or the patron of an ecclesiasticism. The world 
is sick and tired of dry, withered, juiceless 
theological terms and phrases. It cares not 
for, nor understands, terminology and vocab- 
ulary. We preach Christ as the redemption 
from sin ; Christ as the brother of man ; Christ 
as the treasury of riches for the poor ; Christ 
as the shop of soul-medicines for the sick; 
Christ as the solace for the afflicted ; Christ as 
the hope in every discouragement ; Christ as 
the guide in every perplexity; Christ as the 

9 



10 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



reform for every wrong ; Christ as the protec- 
tion of the persecuted ; Christ as the recovery 
for the deserted ; Christ as the beauty for the 
young; Christ as the wisdom of the aged; 
Christ, while we live, the rule for our conver- 
sation ; when we die, Christ the hope of our 
glorification. 

Many men who make loud noise in the 
world about their orthodoxy, instead of preach- 
ing the Gospel of Christ expound the sys- 
tematic theology inferred from the Gospel 
through the epistles of Paul. He who reads 
Paul often reads mystery. The words of 
Christ are simple and easily understood. Paul 
in mind, heart and will was the grandest 
man that ever trod the earth since first the 
Almighty sent it circling round the sun, and 
he wrote as he was moved by the Holy Ghost ; 
but Jesus Christ is a Saviour, whose utterances 
were the statements of the Divine Conscious- 
ness itself. The rule of my preaching is the 
preaching of the Gospel with the gospels. The 
world is hungering and thirsting for less the- 
ology and more Christianity, less of Paul and 
more of Christ. There are plenty of sermons 
on justification, verbal inspiration, effectual 
calling, and the efficacy of the sacraments. 
But the Sermon on the Mount is seldom 
preached, and all that Christianity is meant 



MY THEOLOGY. 



11 



to do in making the life pure is left undone. 
Our duty is no longer to be honest and true 
and self-denying and pure, like the Divine 
Pattern, but to hold accurately the creed of 
the church. 

Not without cause does the Scotch believer 
cry: 

" There's nae gospel noo, lassie, 
There's nae covenant blood ; 
There's nae altar noo, lassie, 
There's nae Lamb o' God. 

" There's nae Chalmers noo, lassie, 
There's nae gude McCheyne ; 
And the dear, dear Cross they preached, lassie, 
The dear, dear Cross is gane. 

" Folks dinna want the Cross, lassie, 
They've cutten down the tree ; 
And naebody believes in it 
But fules like you and me." 



II. 



WHAT IS IT TO BE A CHEISTIAN ? 

Baptisms, confirmations and church-mem- 
berships do not make Christians. You cannot 
make Christians to order by law any more than 
you can make Americans out of foreigners 
by the mere act of naturalization. He is an 
American, no matter where born, who has an 
American heart, whose sympathies and choices, 
labors and sacrifices, make him deserve the 
proud name of American. So the mere act of 
baptism or church-membership gives a man a 
poor title to the Christian name. Paul said 
that the man was not a Jew who was one out- 
wardly, that the mere rite of circumcision was 
nothing ; that he only was a Jew who was one 
inwardly, at heart. 

The Christian Church differs from the Jew- 
ish Church mainly in caring less for things 
ceremonial and more for things spiritual, less 
for rites and more for righteousness. 

It is very important to understand and be- 
lieve the truth which relates to Christ and his 

12 



WHAT IS IT TO BE A CHRISTIAN ? 13 



kingdom ; but the most unhesitating assent of 
the intellect to all the creeds, catechisms, com- 
mentaries and systems framed in eighteen 
hundred years will make no man a Christian. 
Instead of making more noise in the world 
about our orthodoxy than the Master ever did, 
and making such elaborate and ostentatious 
prayers as to be troublesome to our neighbor, 
let us do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly 
with our God. He is the Christian who prac- 
tically follows him "who went about doing 
good," and not he who is loaded and clogged 
with the mere theories of dead men on the 
subject, that leave no scope for anything else. 

"'Tis not the wide phylactery, 

Nor stubborn fasts, nor stated prayers, 
That make us saints ; we judge the tree 
By what it bears. 

"And when a man can live apart 
From works, on theologic trust, 
I know the blood about his heart 
Is dry as dust." 

A man may be a life-long member of the most 
orthodox church in Christendom, and never 
miss a communion or a prayer-meeting, if he 
is mean, selfish and careless of the world's con- 
dition, he is no Christian ; while on the other 
hand a man may not be a communicant, and 
even not much of a church-goer, and yet if he 



14 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



spends his whole life for others he is so much 
like Christ I shall call him a Christian. I do 
not depreciate a public profession of Christ in 
the ordinary church modes, but I believe that 
the grandest profession of the religion of 
Christ is that Christ-like, self-denying charity 
which finds its chief pleasure in ministering 
to the woes and brightening the lives of our 
fellow-men. 

These lines describe the feelings and actions 
of a Christian : 

"Blest is the man whose softening heart 
Feels all another's pain ; 
To whom the supplicating eye 
Was never raised in vain ; 

" Whose "breast expands with generous warmth, 
A stranger's woes to feel, 
And bleeds in pity o'er the wound 
He wants the power to heal. 

"To gentle offices of love 
His feet are never slow ; 
He views, through mercy's melting eye, 
A brother in a foe." 



I 

I 



III. 



THE USEFUL WOMAN. 

Have you not had your admiration excited 
by hearing it said of any one, " She is a useful 
woman"? Would that I could inspire you 
with an abhorrence of being useless and an 
ambition to be useful. Shrivel not into a 
despicable selfishness, cherish a yearning after 
benevolent activity, and feel as if it were but 
half living to live only for yourselves. 

"O woman, forget not thou, earth's honored priest, 

Its tongue, its soul, its life, its pulse, its heart, 
In earth's great chorus to sustain thy part ! 

Chiefest of guests at love's ungrudging feast, 
Play not the niggard ; spurn thy native elod, 

And self disown : 
Live unto thy neighbor, live unto thy God, 

Not unto thyself alone." 

Woman's heart is supposed to be the very 
dwelling-place of mercy, and a useless and self- 
ish woman is a libel upon her sex. We call 
upon you to be our sisters of charity, to go 
forth on errands of mercy to the abodes of 

15 



16 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



sickness and poverty without abjuring all pre- 
tensions to the character of wifehood and 
motherhood. Loathe that spurious sentimen- 
tality which weeps over the imaginary woes 
of a novel, but turns away with a callous 
heart from those real sufferings which abound 
on every hand. You do most for yourselves 
when you do most for others. It is not enough 
that you pity the sorrows of the poor and the 
suffering ; what your heart pities your hands 
must do ; what you pray for you must strive 
to attain. 

If you have a desire to live in the true sense 
of the word, you can least afford to be useless. 
It is lamentable to see how many women live 
only as a waste and weight on fast-flying time. 
0 you poor souls living in uselessness, how 
can I make you see what you are losing! 
What can I say but 

" Eise up, ye women that are at ease, 
Tremble, ye careless daughters," 

and repeat the old call, " Awake, ye that sleep, 
and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give 
you light." 

In the woman form of merciful ministry 
humanity feels the touch as of an angel from 
heaven. Say not the doors of useful service 
are closed against you when there are so many 



THE USEFUL WOMAN. 



17 



poor to help, so many sick longing for the 
sound of a woman's voice and the touch of a 
woman's hand. If you have an earnest pur- 
pose, it will not want for a sphere, it will make 
its own sphere. Would you realize the divin- 
est of womanhood's ideals and be a as the 
angels," listen to the moans of suffering around 
you. Hearken to the voice that whispers in 
your soul; begin with some plain, practical, 
petty duty immediately at hand, and in faith- 
fulness to the lowly duty your life will gradu- 
ally be brought under the power of a supreme 
purpose, 

" And so make life, death, and that fast forever, 
One grand, sweet song." 

If you should die to-day, could friends look 
upon your quiet face and feel that death had 
bereft them of a benefactor ? Could they lay 
snow-white flowers against your hair and 
smooth it down with tearful tenderness and 
fold your hands with lingering caress ! If you 
should die to-day, could woe-worn humanity 
call to mind with loving thought some kindly 
deed the icy hand had wrought, some gentle 
word the frozen lips had said, errands on 
which willing feet had sped? Would you be 
mourned ! A dry-eyed funeral is a sad sight. 
Be always sure of being useful. This will 



18 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



make your life comfortable, your death happy, 
your funeral sad, your account glorious, and 
your eternity blessed. And remember, 

"It isn't the thing you do, dear, 

It's the thing you leave undone, 
Which gives you a bit of heartache 

At the setting of the sun. 
The tender word forgotten, 

The letter you did not write, 
The flower you might have sent, dear, 

Are your haunting ghosts to-night. 

" The stone you might have lifted 

Out of a brother's way, 
The bit of heartsome counsel 

You were hurried too much to say, 
The loving touch of the hand, dear, 

The gentle and winsome tone 
That you had no time nor thought for, 

With troubles enough of your own. 

" The little acts of kindness, 

So easily out of mind ; 
Those chances to be angels, 

Which every one may find ; 
They come in night and silence, 

Each chill, reproachful wraith, 
When hope is faint and flagging, 

And a blight has dropped on faith. 

" For life is all too short, dear, 

And sorrow is all too great, 
To suffer our slow compassion 

That tarries until too late ; 
And it's not the thing you do, dear, 

It's the thing you leave undone, 
Which gives you the bit of heartache 

At the setting of the sun." 



IV. 



ENTHUSIASM. 

No life can be lifted above stale mediocrity 
without the inward glow and divine passion 
called enthusiasm. Kindled from truth and 
eternal principles, it is " God in us." Emerson 
truly says that " every great and commanding 
movement in the annals of the world is the 
triumph of enthusiasm." Lord Lytton says, 
" Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and 
truth accomplishes no victories without it." 
Enthusiasm gives a man irresistible power. 
What power Christians would be in the 
world if each one could honestly say with 
Brainerd, "Oh, that I were a flaming fire in 
the hands of my God ! " We need at this time 
what the Chinese convert told the missionary 
his people wanted, "men with hot hearts to 
tell us of the love of Christ." Do you find in 
this world lukewarmness in any one depart- 
ment of real life ! Do you find anything like 
apathy when men believe their interests or 
safety are involved! It is only skepticism 

19 



20 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



that suffers enthusiasm in the things of Caesar 
and will not endure enthusiasm in the more 
important things of God. We profess to be- 
lieve that the world of sinners outside of 
Christ will be eternally lost unless turned 
from their evil ways ; and yet we so live by 
our indifference as to give the lie to such pro- 
fession, or else stamp ourselves without the 
commonest feeling of humanity. It is impos- 
sible to believe the truths of the Gospel and 
yet be apathetic. I do not believe in religious 
excitement, but I do believe in excitement in 
religion. The cross is the most restless and 
resistless of agitators, and if your religion 
does not excite you, it is because you have no 
religion. If you believe the tear-compelling 
story of Jesus and his love, the best feelings 
and sympathies of your nature will be roused 
to their highest pitch, and you will love with 
an enthusiastic love, and praise with intense 
gratitude him who so loved and bled and died 
for us. If you feel no quenchless love, fiery 
zeal, and glowing enthusiasm for Christ's 
glory, you may disguise it as you like, but 
indeed and in truth you do not believe that 
Christ died that sinners might be redeemed ; 
or you believe in Calvary just as you believe 
in Gettysburg ; you believe in Jesus Christ as 
you believe in Washington, or in some dead 



ENTHUSIASM. 



21 



fact which belongs to history and has no liv- 
ing connection with you or bearing on your 
destiny. We hear much about the trium- 
phant march of the Roman Catholic Church. 
To what is the Roman Church indebted for its 
triumph! To the indifference of Protestants 
and the enthusiasm of Catholics. It is be- 
cause the Catholics are thoroughly devoted 
and in earnest, and are prepared to suffer in 
order to support what they believe to be true. 
If you believe the Grospel, you must be in- 
fluenced by it. If twelve million Romans 
sacrificed their lives to gratify the ambition 
of Caesar; if four million Frenchmen laid 
down their lives in the war-path cut by Na- 
poleon through Europe and whitened foreign 
shores with their bones — soldiers of Christ, are 
you not willing to sacrifice worldly ambition, 
to sacrifice all for Christ ? God grant it ! 



y. 



THE CHUKCH AND THE STAGE. 

The theater owns its origin to religion. In 
-Greece, India, and China the drama was 
originally a religious ceremony, and it was 
intended to promote religion. In the course 
of time the drama ceased to be a religious 
ceremony and became a work of art. 

Every student of church history knows 
that the modern drama sprang originally from 
the church. In the dark ages the priests put 
the whole of theology on the stage, and in this 
way the rude and unlettered mob that gathered 
on saints' days were taught in an effective way 
the truths of religion, so that in the Christian 
era the first theaters were the churches and 
the first actors the priests. 

But secular competition grew apace, and in 
1378 the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's 
Cathedral petitioned Eichard III. to stop 
certain dramatic performances which were 
being gotten up in London outside the church. 
Why ? Because the cathedral clergy of St. 

22 



THE CHUBCH AND THE STAGE. 23 

Paul's had spent so much money on church 
scenery and costumes inside the cathedral, 
they were eager to crush all secular compe- 
tition. 

In Elizabeth's reign the secular drama had 
grown so popular that a preacher exclaims, 
" Woe is me ! At the play-house it is not 
possible to get a seat, while at the church 
vacant seats are plenty." The clergy did not 
object to the principle of acting, or because 
the play was immoral, except when it satirized 
the drunken and smoking rector. Nor did the 
clergy object to the play because it hurt the 
people, but because it pleased them. They 
groaned when the people shouted. 

Grod has implanted a dramatic element in 
most of our natures; recognized and culti- 
vated it in the Bible. It is not something 
built up outside of ourselves by Thespis and 
iEschylus and Sophocles and Euripides and 
Terence and Plautus and Seneca and Con- 
greve and Farquhar and Corneille and Alfieri 
and Goldsmith and Sheridan and Shakespeare. 
Man is not responsible for the dramatic ele- 
ment in his soul, but for the perversion of it. 

If vacant seats are so plenty in the church, 
whose fault is it? The human mind is the 
same in the pew as in the theater. The world 
suffers more from too little dramatic power 



24 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



in the church than from too much outside of 
it. A preacher asked Garrick, the tragedian, 
" Why is it you are able to produce so much 
more effect with the recital of your fictions 
than we do by the delivery of the most im- 
portant truths?" "My lord," said Garrick, 
"you speak truths as if they were fictions; 
we speak fictions as if they were truths." And 
wherever to-day, all Christendom through, 
there is a man with graceful gestures, modu- 
lated voice, elegant expression, appropriate 
emotion, and graceful action ; wherever you 
find a man as natural and impressive, as audi- 
ble and as interesting as the actor, you will 
find a full church. Let the preachers work at 
the people with the same power, intelligence, 
and will as the actor is obliged to work at the 
public, depend upon it their achievements will 
be in proportion. The actor does not grumble 
because the people won't come to the theater. 
He says, " I am to blame." People don't come 
to church because they are not interested. 
Let us learn from the actor how to read and 
how to infuse life into our service. 

Other things besides religion are good. 
Dickens' works are eternal arguments against 
injustice, and in writing novels he was as well 
employed as in preaching the Gospel. Mendels- 
sohn, by his sublime compositions, did better 



THE CHURCH AND THE STAGE. 



25 



serve the world than going out as a missionary 
to China ; and Shakespeare served the world 
and his Maker better as a dramatist than as a 
bishop preaching sermons that nobody wanted 
to hear. The arts and sciences must go hand 
in hand with religion and morality. 

The church of the past stood aloof from the 
world. The church of the future will assimi- 
late with it. The church has spent much time 
peering into amusements to see what evil they 
contained, and has kept digging away at this 
instead of putting divine grace into them and 
letting that elevate and regulate them. We 
have been absorbed in ferreting out and de- 
claiming against the evil, and forgotten that 
we have a corresponding duty to develop the 
good. The church has failed to regulate 
popular amusements, it has withdrawn itself 
from them, and if the devil has come in and 
taken full possession the church is to blame. 

I know that I overstep the mark of received 
church opinion, but I would rather be right 
than consistent. If the church has, with mis- 
taken zeal, fostered a false position, it would 
be cowardly, having discovered the error, to 
withhold the truth from society through fear of 
being turned on and called inconsistent. This 
age needs men who have the courage to meet 
prejudice. Let us bring the leaven of the 



26 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



Grospel into the amusement lump, and teach 
the people how to use amusements without 
abusing them, and save the church from her 
present humiliating attitude as the declared 
enemy of the drama, from attending which 
she has no power to restrain her members. 
The world is growing better; the church is 
growing wiser. We are in a transition age. 
Religious opinion is bridging over the scandal- 
ous chasm which has so long existed between 
church and stage. As an ethical question, 
most persons are agreed that amusements in 
the abstract are not wrong. Some people 
mistake their prejudices for conscientious 
scruples. " Man has an animal nature as well 
as rational faculties ; he has instincts that are 
purely animal as well as characteristics purely 
intellectual and spiritual, and the playing out 
of these impulses within the limits of modera- 
tion are just as sinless as in the animal pure 
and simple." The mind kept on the continual 
stretch of serious duty will prematurely lose 
its healthy action. Old and young alike must 
have their times of sport, and it is not neces- 
sary that we bring the hours of recreation 
under too rigid scrutiny of reason. The scru- 
tiny of conscience must be there. However 
pleasant it may be to do wrong, it is never 
right to do it, and sin committed in the pursuit 



THE CHTJKCH AND THE STAGE. 



27 



of pleasure is as sinful as if done for the sake 
of profit. But having made this reservation, 
the wisest of us can sometimes afford to lay 
aside our dignity and become children. As 
Martin Luther romped with the children, and 
the immortal Chalmers trundled a hoop, so 
our amusements, trifling in themselves, may 
be considered wise for the same reason " that 
the bow needs to be completely unbent." I 
do not take the untenable and unchristian 
position of condemning everything in life un- 
less invested with seriousness. That would 
make life too gloomy. But if, on the other 
hand, we make life all sunshine, and sport 
continually in its beams, like insects of the 
day, pleasure-seekers only, it is a very differ- 
ent thing. That which may be commended 
as an occasional recreation becomes very 
unmanly or unwomanly if made the object 
of daily pursuit. Our amusements may be 
prostituted to evil ; so may horses. Because 
they are often the gambler's richest resources 
shall we refuse to use them ? The theater is 
primarily for amusement, and not for moral 
instruction. The home, the social circle, the 
church, the Sunday-school, the companionship 
of good books, and, above all, the Bible, are to 
teach us what is right and true. 

The charge that religion is scoffed at on the 



28 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



stage is false. Hypocrites and charlatans 
occasionally furnish subjects for its character- 
ization. The cause of religion does not suffer 
when its spurious representatives are held up 
to ridicule and contempt. Christ did the 
same thing. The closing passage of an old 
play ("The Hypocrite") containing such a 
character would seem to be a sufficient answer 
to the charge to which I have just alluded : 

"Nay, now, my dear sir, I must take the liberty to tell you, 
you earry things too far and go from one extreme to another. 
What ! Because a worthless wretch has imposed upon you 
under the fallacious show of an austere grimace, will you needs 
have it that everybody is like him ? Confound the good with 
the bad, and conclude there are no truly religious in the world ! 
Leave, my dear sir, such rash conclusions to fools and liber- 
tines. Let us be careful to distinguish as between virtue and 
the appearance of it. Guard, if possible, against doing honor 
to hypocrisy ; but at the same time allow there is no character 
in life greater or more valuable than that of the truly devout, 
nor anything more noble or more beautiful than the fervor of 
a sincere piety." 

All actors are not moral. All preachers are 
not moral. There are bad men in all profes- 
sions. There are men and women on the 
stage whose characters are as spotless and 
their lives as beneficient as any in our 
churches. Crimes are committed on the 
stage; so they are in the Bible. Goodness 
and badness are put in opposition in both 
books and plays. The chief themes of the 



THE CHUKCH AND THE STAGE. 29 



theater are the passions of men. So are the 
subjects for the chisel of Angelo, the brush of 
Guido, the pencil of Dore, the burden of the 
Sermon on the Mount by Christ, in whose lips 
there was no guile, and whose every thought 
was without spot or blemish. If the exposure 
of sin is an indecency, to be consistent all the 
literature of the world, both sacred and pro- 
fane, must be committed to the names. Call 
the roll of all the plays that achieve the widest 
and most permanent success. They are as 
innocent as milk, and the leaders of the stage 
would be astonished at being accused of pro- 
ducing an immoral piece. The preacher con- 
trasts virtue and vice from a positive point 
of view; the dramatist presents pictorially 
the contrasts between virtue and vice, and I 
know of no standard play in which the former 
is not always triumphant in the end. The 
Eoman actor charged with having corrupted 
the youth of the city said before the Senate : 

"When do we bring a vice upon the stage 
That goes off unpunished? Do we teach 
By the success of wicked undertakings 
Others to tread in their forbidden steps? 
We show no arts of Lydian panderism, 
Corinthian poisons, Persian flatteries, 
But mulcted so in the conclusion that 
Even those spectators that were so inclined 
Go home changed men." 



30 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



The true end of the drama is to represent 
human nature ; to teach a complete knowledge 
of human character. Give a man all kinds 
of knowledge in history, poetry, philosophy, 
science, languages ; let him possess the graces 
and bearing of a god, and the golden thoughts 
and musical words of a poet — without a 
knowledge of human nature all his other ac- 
complishments would hurl him into an ab- 
surdity. " Know thyself " was a maxim of old 
Greek philosophy. Know thyself and all thy 
fellow-creatures is the truer and wiser maxim 
of a higher philosophy. In the writings 
of the great dramatist we have the following 
types of character depicted in the follow- 
ing personages: in Marcus Brutus, a self- 
sacrificing patriot ; in Macbeth, a brave soldier 
corrupted by ambition ; in Othello, a guileless 
nature ruined by jealousy; in King Lear, a 
hot-blooded tyrant thwarted into madness; 
in Shylock, a revengeful man carried away by 
his passion ; in King John, a thorough-going 
villain ; in Richard III., a spoiled child, angry 
and tearful by turns, blaming everybody but 
himself for his misfortunes ; in Benedict, a 
smart fellow who finds it easier to live at 
other people's expense; in Henry V., an ac- 
complished king ; in Prospero, the portrait of 
a Christian philosopher. 



THE CHUKCH AND THE STAGE. 31 

These grand plays, to which every element 
of my nature responds, interpreted by good 
histrionic talent, with all the adjuncts of 
scenery and costume, are to me sources of 
rich pleasure and intellectual improvement. 

Water cannot rise higher than its source, 
and the character of the theater cannot be 
sustained above the character of those who 
attend it. Playwrights and actors are not to 
blame for what we often get on the stage. 
The Americans like slang and vulgarity. 
Playwrights and actors do not live to write 
and act; they have the bread-and-butter 
human weakness, and write and act to live. 
They know what the people want, and they 
give it to them. The noble sentiment raises 
feeble applause, but the word that looks two 
ways, or the exhibition of doubtful propriety, 
brings all the feet down and makes all hands 
clap. The theater and opera will never in tone 
and tendency be above the life that attends 
them. The demand will control the supply. 
In nothing else do Americans show so much 
bad taste as in their indorsement of plays 
and players. "Hamlet," "Macbeth," "King 
Lear," or " Richard III " — are these the types 
which most frequently appear ! Look at the 
placards on the walls for the answer. And 
the Shakespeares, Goldsmiths and Sheridans 



32 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



are not likely to be popular so long as people 
throng the theaters to hear poor puns and 
silly songs which the compounders of gayety 
burlesque provide. 

Still I am hopeful for the future. A larger 
and more refined class of people attend the 
theater now than ever. A higher tone of 
morals prevails in the best plays and is mani- 
fested in the character of the players. 

The church has made a tremendous mistake 
in its wholesale denunciation of the theater. 
A larger part of the community attend the 
theater, and the majority of our population 
are moral and virtuous. Amusements are 
proper for Christians because they are right, 
and they are right because the divine law 
written in our hearts makes them so. There 
is nothing in the precepts of our religion that 
makes us march down the path of life to the 
tune of the " Dead March in Saul." The pul- 
pit's vituperation of the theatrical profession is 
so unchristian as only a clergyman who never 
saw a good play would ever dream of making. 
The stage seldom or never strikes back. The 
numerous scandals of American clergymen 
now serving terms in the various penitentia- 
ries of the land afford legitimate material for 
the stage. These materials remain unused 
because the dramatist, the manager, and the 



THE CHURCH AND THE STAGE. 



33 



actor have too great a respect for the religion 
of Christ to weaken it by emphasizing the sins 
of any of his servants. Some men who write 
against the sensuality of the stage remind 
me of the preacher in Canada who declaimed 
against dancing in such a manner that the 
dancing went on but the parson was himself 
discharged on account of the vulgarity of his 
discourse. The time has passed for offensive 
dictation and inquisitorial condemnation on 
the part of bigots. 

The theater is here to stay. Reform is the 
note of the future. Eliminate the bad. En- 
courage the good. The shameful posters, the 
female attire, or rather the lack of it, the com- 
promising attitudes, the silly things accepted, 
the commonplace persons admired and com- 
mended — thunder as much at these as you 
will. Let ridicule, sarcasm, and denunciation 
exhaust their armories upon these abuses, 
these positive evils. 

" Can I go to the theater ? " asks the Chris- 
tian. I answer, If you can. " Let every man 
be persuaded in his own mind." Refuse to do 
or go where your conscience forbids, but re- 
frain also from condemning your neighbor, 
whose conscience may not require him to walk 
in the same path you have marked out for 
yourself. 



34 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



From amusements that demand of you an 
outlay beyond your means you had better 
stand aloof. If you have dollars and days for 
the theater, and mites and minutes for the 
church, you need reconstruction. Confirmed 
theater-goers are unfitted for life's duties. I 
have scores of women in my church who pay 
good prices for their matinee seats Saturday 
afternoons who reluctantly drop a dime in the 
contribution-box on Sunday. These women 
never have time nor money for the Lord's 
work. How many of you are so given to lev- 
ity, so giddy, so frivolous, that you are inca- 
pable of a serious thought ! Your hearts are 
set on having " a good time." 

Once a man stood stunned at the first sight 
of the Niagara. "When he got his breath 
back he simply and coolly said, "I wonder 
how much machinery all this would turn?" 
"We are told there is enough power there when 
converted into electricity to lighten the world. 
And there is enough vigorous manhood and 
womanhood in this city, if rightly applied, to 
illumine our whole country. But behold the 
thousands wasting that power, throwing it to 
the four winds ! 

Dugald Stewart tells of a man who spent 
fifteen years trying to balance a broom on his 
chin. Hundreds of men and women in New 



THE CHURCH AND THE STAGE. 35 

York are scarcely better employed. Their 
lives are summed up in rising, dressing, din- 
ing, wining, loafing, visiting, pleasure-seeking, 
and sleeping. Busy men about trifles, piti- 
ful butterfly species, flitting from flower to 
flower, and dying like autumnal insects, de- 
spised and forgotten. 

Charles Lamb once wrote a play for the 
stage, and he went to see it enacted. The 
play was condemned, and loudest hissing came 
from the gallery where Charles Lamb sat, and 
the audience looked and saw that it was the 
author of the play who was hissing his own 
production. 

If at last we are compelled to look back 
upon a wasted life, we ourselves will be the 
severest critics. And remember this : when 
you go out of this world and your life has 
been wasted, no encore can ever bring you 
back to reenact it. "As the tree falleth so it 
lieth." Your character at the last moment 
will be your character through all eternity. 
Mr. Palmer, the London actor, dropped dead 
on the stage while quoting the words of the 
play, " 0 Grod, is there another and a better 
world!" I do not know what will be your 
exit, but in that hour there will come before 
you all you have been and all you might have 
been. 0 men and women of the theatrical pro- 



36 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



fession to whom these words may come, pre- 
pare for the closing scenes of this life, when 
the footlights will be the burning world, the 
orchestra the resurrection trumpets, the trag- 
edy the upheaval of a world of graves, and 
the closing scene the dispersing of the audi- 
ence to their everlasting homes of gladness or 
sorrow. 

Amid all his levity and excess, Burns had 
moments of deep seriousness, recognized man's 
spiritual and immortal part, and the necessity 
of living for something higher than this pres- 
ent world. I was struck the other day with 
these lines, a grand sermon, which he sent to 
an intimate friend : 

" The voice of Nature loudly cries — 
And many a message from the skies — 
That something in ns never dies ; 
That on this frail, uncertain state 
Hang matters of eternal weight ; 
That future life in worlds unknown 
Must take its hue from this alone, 
Whether as heavenly glory bright, 
Or dark as misery's woeful night. 
Since, then, my honored first of friends, 
On this poor being all depends, 
Let us the important now employ, 
And live as those who never die." 



VI. 



THE RELIGION OF SPOOKS. 

Spiritualism in America was born in 1848 
in Hydesville, Wayne County, N. Y. The 
house of John D. Fox was disturbed by noises 
which were at first attributed to rats and mice, 
but which were soon recognized as rappings, 
made seemingly by invisible knuckles. One 
night the rappings commenced with unusual 
violence. Mr. Fox tried the window-sashes 
to see if they rattled in the wind, and found 
them all secure ; but Kate, his twelve-year-old 
daughter, observed that when he shook the 
sashes the rappings followed ; and turning in 
the direction from which the sound proceeded, 
and snapping her fingers she exclaimed, 
" Here, Old Splitf oot, do as I do." 

The knockings which instantly followed so 
frightened Kate and her sister Margaret that 
they for a time had no wish to further cul- 
tivate the acquaintance of "Old Splitfoot." 
The mother, however, carried on the conver- 
sation, and received a message which professed 

37 



38 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



to come from the spirit of Charles B. Rosma, 
who said he had been murdered in that house 
some years ago. Then there was a general 
rumpus; the tables tipped, the bedsteads 
raised, and the chairs upset, until it seemed 
as if the spooks had monopolized the furniture 
business. " Well," the people said, " we have 
something new ! " Something new 1 This is 
important, if true. Modern spiritualists per- 
sistently urge that the spiritual manifestations 
of our time are the harbingers of a new dis- 
pensation. Thousands of years ago Solomon 
asked : "Is there any thing whereof it may be 
said, See this is new? It hath been already 
of old time, which was before us." So of mod- 
ern spiritualism. From time immemorial the 
human mind lacked conservativeness, and 
always tried to push its way into the myste- 
rious continent which G-od has veiled from 
mortal sight and fortified against irreverent 
curiosity. A cursory glance at the records of 
the past reveals the unimpeachable evidence 
that from the remotest ages the boundaries 
of that "undiscovered country, from whose 
bourne no traveler e'er returns," have been 
trodden by restless inquisitiveness, anxious 
to catch the sound of supernatural footfalls, 
and to learn from the spirit tongues here the 
wonders that make up the never-changing 



THE BELIGION OF SPOOKS. 



39 



hereafter. Spiritualism has coexisted and 
harmonized with the densest ignorance, the 
most horrible superstitions, the vilest immo- 
ralities, and the most atrocious savagery the 
world has ever seen. Spiritualistic phenom- 
ena, as exhibited in the heathen world, is in 
all essential respects similar to the manifesta- 
tions now observed among spiritualists. In 
Greece, temples called Plutonia were conse- 
crated to the spirits of the dead, and rites 
conducive to the interchange of spiritualistic 
influences were most scrupulously observed. 
The profits of those engaged in the business 
were enormous. The ancient Greeks em- 
ployed small tables for purposes of divination, 
and planchettes with their attendant phenom- 
ena were not uncommon. Necromancy, or con- 
sultation with the dead, was one of the hea- 
thenish customs of ancient Greece. Herod- 
otus twenty-five hundred years ago related 
the vile communications which Periander, the 
tyrant of Corinth and wife-murderer, received 
when he consulted the unclean spirits and 
insulted every woman in Corinth. Maximus 
Tyrius throws a little light on Grecian necro- 
mancy when he writes : " There was a place 
near Lake Avernus called the Prophetic 
Cavern. Persons were in attendance there 
who called up ghosts. Any one desiring it 



40 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



came hither, and having killed a victim and 
poured out libations, summoned whatever 
ghost he wanted. The ghost came, very faint 
and doubtful to the sight, but vocal and pro- 
phetic, and having answered the questions 
went off." The reported transfigurations of 
Imblichus were just as credible as modern 
materializations. Thoughtful men in those 
times did not hesitate to ascribe them to trick- 
ery and fraud, or to natural means, the secret 
of which was confined to a few initiated in- 
dividuals. Cicero, writing of the frivolous 
and deceptive character of the Grecian oracles 
of those days, denounces them as " inconsider- 
ate babble, never of any authority with a man of 
even moderate capacity. 11 The Cumaean Sibyl 
tells the Trojan iEneas as much about his 
family as any New York medium could, and 
from the shade of his father Anchises he re- 
ceives responses as remarkable as any that 
have ever purported to come from the dead in 
our day ; and yet Virgil, who describes it all, 
calls the maiden possessed of prophetic fancy 
"deranged in intellect 11 Among the Eomans 
of antiquity the dead men were their heroes 
and demi-gods. Consulting the spirits was the 
favorite method of finding out who was to 
be the next emperor, and doses of poison be- 
came so often necessary to fulfill the medium's 



THE EELIGION OF SPOOKS. 41 



prophecy that for public safety the govern- 
ment prohibited these infernal arts, and 
offenders were severely punished. The Ro- 
man law burned alive the mediums, or flung 
them from the Tarpean Rock. In Sardinia in 
184 B.C. the government prosecuted sorcery 
and condemned two thousand mediums, in 
order to prevent crime and save the state 
from the calamities that came through the lies 
and poisonings of the demon-guided wretches. 
Pliny the naturalist, who wrote about 77 a.d., 
while he admits some shade of truth in 
the mystic art, attributes its phenomena to 
physical causes, and says : " We may be fully 
assured and boldly conclude that it is a de- 
testable and abominable art, grounded on no 
certain rules, full of lies and vanities. 79 At 
last even the common people abandoned the 
mediums, satisfied that while they could not 
explain some strange things, there was more 
of imposture connected with thern than could 
be reconciled with their superhuman claims. 

India from the early days has been under 
the control of mediums. Spiritualism has had 
time to test its beneficence and progressive- 
ness in India. There spiritualism has been 
full-blown for ages, and has flourished undis- 
turbed. Now what has the undisputed sway 
of universal spiritualism accomplished in 



42 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



India? Not one in 1500 of her 120,000,000 
women can read. According to the censns of 
1881, there were nearly 15,000 women con- 
nected with idol temples as prostitutes; 
21,000,000 wailing widows, who were given 
in the hands of brutal men at eight or ten 
years, are cursed for the death of their hus- 
bands; 41,000,000 women are shut up in 
their zenanas. While the Indians provide 
food for their sacred cows and monkeys, for 
serpents and crocodiles, their lepers and help- 
less and homeless and friendless die uncared 
for. In 1886 more than 22,000 persons died of 
snake bites, which they dared not seek to cure 
lest they might interfere with the ghosts of 
their grandfathers, who had come back in that 
shape. Eead the story of India's shocking 
cruelties and despotic castes, its disregard of 
childhood and degradation of womanhood, and 
its indifference to human woe and human life, 
and then ask yourself if we want that kind of 
" progress " in America. " By their fruits ye 
shall know them." In China spirit mediums 
are found everywhere ; every house has its an- 
cestral tablets which are worshiped ; and what 
is the result ! The mediums have so obstructed 
progress that they have almost made it a coun- 
try dead to the civilized world. Their great 
arguments against railroads and telegraphs 



THE RELIGION OF SPOOKS. 



43 



are that their grandfathers' graves or their 
great-grandmothers' ghosts would be dis- 
turbed. 

Every schoolboy is familiar with the poiv- 
woiving stories of our own Indians, and spirit- 
ual mediums are common among them. There 
is not a savage tribe of which we ever had or 
now have any record which did not claim to 
have unseen powers with the spirits of the 
dead. 

Spiritualism in America is just as demoral- 
izing as it has been and now is in heathen 
lands, and everywhere and always instills into 
the judgment a fanaticism that is revolting 
to the natural mind. So licentious have been 
its deeds, and such disgusting and degrading 
orgies have been enacted under its patronage, 
that the civil law has often been invoked 
against it. It has broken up families innu- 
merable, it has pushed young women into 
profligacy, ruined the financial prosperity of 
thousands, blinded many eyes to the distinc- 
tion between right and wrong, and in the luna- 
tic asylums of the United States there are to- 
day more than ten thousand bleeding victims 
of this delusion. 



VII. 



FASHION. 

God is a lover of dress. He has put robes 
of beauty and glory upon all bis works. Who 
can doubt that he will smile upon the evidence 
of correct taste manifested by his children? 
No man can afford to disregard appearances. 
The shabby man loses every year a thousand 
times the cost of a good suit of clothes. Em- 
ployers like their people to dress well. It is 
easier to borrow a hundred dollars in a good 
suit of clothes than ten cents in an old coat and 
shabby hat. " The apparel oft proclaims the 
man." Dress is the visible sign by which the 
stranger forms his opinion of us. Dress af- 
fects a man's manners and morals. A general 
negligence of dress very often proclaims a 
corresponding negligence of address. We can 
scarcely lose self-respect so long as we have 
respect to appearance; still, the best clothes 
are often worn by many small-salaried dapper 
dandies, broken-down merchants, and men 

44 



FASHION. 



45 



who avoid their tailor because of mortgages 
on their clothes. Polonius's advice is good : 

"Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy." 

No true woman will be indifferent to her 
appearance; elegance fits woman. The love 
of beauty in dress belongs to her ; she ought 
to take pride in herself and be solicitous to 
have all her belongings well chosen and in 
good taste. A sloven is abominable. Kude- 
ness is sin. Female loveliness appears to the 
best advantage when set off: by simplicity of 
dress. A woman is best dressed who conducts 
herself so that those who have been in her 
company shall not recollect what she had on. 

I have no sympathy with the " dress-reform- 
ers," who glory in their outlandish apparel, 
and who are more proud of being " out of the 
fashion " than others of being in. 

To love dress is not to be a slave of fashion ; 
to give dress your first thought, your best 
time, or all your money, is the evidence of 
such slavery. The Bible says, " The body is 
more than raiment"; but many people read 
the Bible Hebrew- wise — backward — and thus 
the general conviction is that raiment is more 
than the body. 

Fashion tyrannically rules the world. She 



46 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



pinches the feet with tight shoes, and squeezes 
the breath out of the body with tight lacing. To 
be " in the fashion " has made the most famous 
frauds of the day, and keeps hundreds of men 
struggling for their commercial existence. 

Fashion dwarfs the intellect. Virtue gives 
up the ghost at her smile. Fashion is the 
greatest of all liars ; she has made society in- 
sincere; she has turned society into a great 
show-room; she has made the poor poorer, 
and the rich more avaricious. Fashion is New 
York's leading undertaker, and drives hun- 
dreds of hearses to Greenwood. 

Dress is a lower beauty, for which the higher 
beauty should not be sacrificed. The holiest 
duty is to wear the richest dress on the soul. 
Woman, with her strong and quick powers, her 
bold and daring genius, was made for a higher 
purpose, a nobler use, a grander destiny, than to 
waste herself on the unified fooleries of fashion. 
Care more for what you are than what you 
appear. Let an empty brain, hollow heart, 
and useless life throw you into a hysterical fit 
quicker than an old-fashioned bonnet or an 
ill-fitting dress. Let not fashion close your 
ears to the appeal of Christ's church, and your 
eyes to the outstretched hand of the poor. Let 
not fashion demand of you a style of dress 
insufficient to keep out the cold and rain, and 



FASHION. 



47 



that will imperil your health. " What ! know 
ye not that your body is the temple of the 
Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of 
God, and ye are not your own 1 " Submit to 
no style which will compromise your mod- 
esty. Wear no costume which suggests im- 
pure thoughts to the beholder. 

It is the instinctive propensity in human 
nature to decorate. It is right to adorn your- 
self for your own eyes, for the eyes of your 
husband, if you are a true wife ; if you are a 
maiden, for the eyes of suitors and compan- 
ions ; but first of all strive to adorn yourself 
for God's eyes. "Whose adorning let it be 
the hidden man of the heart, in that which is 
not corruptible, e TT en the ornament of a meek 
and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God 
of great price." It is worthy of remark that 
Plato, the loftiest of all Grecian sages, has a 
passage which strikingly resembles that of the 
Apostle : " Behavior, and not gold, is the orna- 
ment of a woman. To courtesans these things 
— ornaments and jewels — are advantageous to 
their catching more admirers ; but for a woman 
who wishes to enjoy the favor of one man 
good behavior is her proper ornament and not 
dresses ; and you should have the blush upon 
your countenance, which is the sign of modes- 
ty, instead of paint, and worth and sobriety 



48 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



instead of gold and emeralds." Paul to Titus 
says : " That they may adorn the doctrine of 
Grod our Saviour in all things." Even the 
great truth of J esus Christ is here represented 
as being susceptible of decoration on the part 
of those who profess it. Adorn the Grospel by 
useful lives. Say not that the doors of useful 
service are closed against you. On every hand 
there are hungry to feed and naked to clothe, 
and many sick in the hospitals longing for 
the sound of woman's voice and the touch of 
woman's hand. Seventy-five thousand desti- 
tute children to be gathered from our streets 
into the Sunday-schools, and three hundred 
and forty-five thousand adult heathen in our 
own city to be led to the Saviour. How much 
better to fill such a sphere to which Grod calls 
you than to flutter like silly butterflies round 
milliners, dressmakers, and manicures. Live 
for Christ ; and with the light and glory of a 
true womanhood, fill every day with useful- 
ness, as a June day fills the air with the redo- 
lence of the roses. The busy Master might 
have enthroned himself in a majestic repose, 
but his unwearied going about doing good 
was a withering rebuke to uselessness. He 
honored the useful in the fowls of the air and 
in the lilies of the field, but the barren tree 
he smote with a curse. He closed the bright 



FASHION. 



49 



gates of his kingdom in the face of the virgins 
who preferred indolence and sleep to duty, 
and the man who wrapped np his gifts in a 
napkin he sent away to darkness. Oh, you 
were made for a better companionship than 
those of whom it is said : 

" Their only labor is to kill time, 

And labor dire it is, and weary woe ; 
They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme, 
Or saunter forth with tottering steps and slow." 

Life is not a toy to be played with, a doll 
to be dressed, an ornament to exhibit, nor a 
bubble to float in the air, nor an insect to 
dance on the wave until some wind overtake 
it ; it is not to be a low or dreamy indulgence, 
not a plague that wastes. Life is a great gift 
of God, a single opportunity with possibilities 
vast enough to fill time and eternity with the 
beatitudes of God, the joy of the angels, and 
praise of men. Goethe said, "To be useful, 
that is life." To be useful ! How noble, how 
vast, how sublime, how Christ-like ! Hence- 
forth let your life be such as the poet sings : 

"I live for those that love me, 

For those that know me true, 
For the heaven that smiles above me, 

And waits my coming too ; 
For the cause that lacks assistance, 
For the wrongs that need resistance, 
For the future in the distance, 

For the good that I can do." 



VIII. 



THANKSGIVING FOOTBALL. 

The present athletic craze is a reaction from 
the unwise indifference of ' the past. In the 
college halls, where Minerva once held sway, 
Hercules is now enshrined. The principal 
talk among college men is football, and our 
colleges and students take rank, not according 
to their intellectual attainments and manly 
character, but according to the size of the 
biceps muscle and the record in some sort of 
sport. 

Sin committed in the pursuit of pleasure 
is as sinful as if done for the sake of profit. 
Thanksgiving Day among the people gener- 
ally has more to do with the stomach than 
with the service of G-od, and with the students 
especially it has, within several years, become 
the day when lads get on their first spree. 

The sights enacted in our city Thursday 
night by the college men, the taking posses- 
sion of saloons, breaking up theaters, blowing 

50 



THANKSGIVING FOOTBALL. 



51 



horns in people's faces, kissing unprotected 
women on the public streets, carrying them 
on their shoulders, drinking themselves drunk, 
shouting themselves hoarse, and singing with 
Bowery-tough bravado were a disgrace to our 
civilization, and the colleges and universities 
which tolerate such depravities should be con- 
sistent and drop the name of Christian. 

A thousand wild Indians or monkeys turned 
loose could not have acted worse than did the 
respectable sons of praying mothers from col- 
leges and universities founded by Christian 
patriots. I know this is unpopular talk, but 
with popularity an honest preacher has sim- 
ply nothing to do. 

That these excessive college sports unfit the 
students who take part in them for the active 
work of life is evident from the fact that the 
majority of our best scholars and most suc- 
cessful men come from the smaller colleges ; 
and if the rich men believe in developing the 
brains of the country, let them endow the 
hundreds of small, struggling colleges through- 
out the land. 

On a day set apart by the President of the 
United States of America for thanksgiving 
to G-od for his goodness of the year, cultured 
gentlemen fight like madmen, goaded by twen- 
ty-five thousand people, as if bereft of their 



52 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



reason, sitting nearly five hours in the chilling 
blasts and yelling themselves hoarse. It shows 
a tendency in our national life that not only 
poisons the young, but may plague our fair 
republic into the grave of the dead nations of 
history. 



IX. 



THE EESPONSIBILITIES OF THE PEESS. 

The most influential factor in our American 
life is the newspaper. The mother dies, the 
school is only for our younger days, and the 
church reaches only a part of the community. 
The newspaper reaches everybody. It comes 
to us not only as a news-teller, but also as an 
oracle. It not only reflects public sentiment, 
but also shapes it. With few exceptions I 
can truthfully say the newspapers of this city 
are daily preaching sobriety, temperance, and 
honesty in every department of life. Here 
and there a sensational sheet becomes a sewer 
and publishes the putrefying details of vice 
and shame, and magnifies a good man's hon- 
est intentions into a public scandal ; but the 
daily press in this city, with few exceptions, 
has been brave to denounce wrong-doing in 
high and low places, swift to recognize merit 
in public life and defend the oppressed, and 
in its tone and tendency is far above the ma- 
jority of the life that reads it. 

53 



54 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



There are recreant editors, unfair reporters, 
and unclean columns, just as there are rene- 
gade preachers, praying defaulters, and sanc- 
timonious robbers of widows and orphans. 
But why is it that the New York "Daily 
Sewer " exhausts all its editions when its col- 
umns are filthiest ! The diseased appetites 
of the people demand unhealthy intelligence, 
and newpapers are made to sell. 

If you want a pure newspaper, don't buy 
anything but a pure newspaper. The demand 
will control the supply. Newspaper men will 
tell you that the greatest trial of their profes- 
sion is the people's demand for the sensational 
instead of the sensible. But, gentlemen jour- 
nalists, it is your sacred mission to lead the 
people, not to follow them. If you must have 
a scandal column, label it "Deadly Poison." 
Benjamin Harris, a pioneer journalist of Amer- 
ica, in issuing the prospectus of his " Publick 
Occurrences, both Foreign and Domestick," 
published September, 1690, quaintly announces 
what he conceives to be the duties of an ed- 
itor. Among these duties he mentions the fol- 
lowing : 

" Thirdly, that something may be done to- 
ward the curing or at least the charming of 
the spirit of lying which prevails among us, 
wherefore nothing shall be entered but what 



THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE PRESS. 55 

we have reason to believe is true, repairing to 
the best fountains for our information. And 
when there appears any material mistake in 
anything that is collected it shall be corrected 
in the next." 

Would to God that every modern editor 
were as conscientious as old Benjamin Harris ! 
My high regard for the gentlemen of the press 
justifies me in speaking plainly. Let there 
be no more catering to the tastes of morbid 
curiosity, no more intrusion into the privacy 
of the domestic circle, no personalities, no 
publication of mere rumors and shocking de- 
tails of social evils, and let every newspaper 
man rite that only to which he could suffix 
his name and which he would have his mother, 
wife, or children read with pride. 



X. 



WHAT TO TEACH A BOY. 

The tender twig is bent in childhood, the 
spirit is then shaped, the principles are then 
implanted, and the whole character formed. 
What to teach a boy ? is an important ques- 
tion. Divine wisdom, " Train np a child in 
the way he should go, and when he is old he 
will not depart from it," harmonizes with the 
proverb, "As the twig is bent the tree inclines." 

Accuracy. 

The great want of Americans is accuracy. 
Some men live in a kind of mental telescope, 
through whose magnifying medium every ant- 
hill is turned into a mountain. General Pope 
was renowned among his soldiers for his ex- 
aggerated rhetoric. In one of the engage- 
ments a private was mortally wounded; a 
chaplain knelt beside him, and opening his 
Bible at random read about Samson's slaugh- 
ter of the Philistines with the jaw-bone of an 
ass. He had not quite finished when the poor 
fellow interrupted him by saying, " Hold on, 

56 



WHAT TO TEACH A BOY. 



57 



chaplain, don't deceive a dying man. Isn't 
the name of John Pope signed to that ! " If 
a man is to be accurate he must be taught 
accuracy in his childhood. Let your boy with 
the first lispings of speech be taught to speak 
accurately on all subjects, be they trivial or 
important, and your boy when he becomes a 
man will scorn to tell a lie. Teach your boy 
to be sober, honest, modest, and truthful in 
his observations; by example show him the 
strict letter of the fact, and do not deal in 
the marvelous. If your boy has committed a 
fault or carelessly broken anything, and takes 
the full blame upon himself and makes no ex- 
cuses about it, that boy will make every inch 
a man. Encourage him to tell the truth. Don't 
whip him because, like a little man, he tells 
the truth. Whip him — he may lie the next 
time to escape the whipping. 

Consideration for the Feelings of Others. 

Teach him to have consideration for the 
feelings of others — to say not a word, to give 
not a look, that would cause unnecessary 
pain. We can understand how that a boy 
who had never been taught better might carry 
torpedoes in his pocket and delight in throw- 
ing them at the feet of passers-by, but we 
cannot understand how a man who was well 



58 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



instructed as a boy could do such a thing. 
And yet there are men who carry torpedoes 
all their lives, and take exceeding great pleas- 
ure in tossing them at people, and enjoy a 
fiendish delight in seeing them jump. 

Contentment. 

Children are always happy, joyous, and con- 
tented. They sing with the poet, 

"A fig for care, and a fig for woe." 

They can, as Shakespeare says, 

"Make a July's day as short as December's.''" 

Indeed, Wordsworth sings of the 

" Sweet childish days that were as long 
As twenty days are now." 

Discontent is the bitter in the cup of life. 
When Pope tells us 

"Man never is, but always to be blessed," 

it would seem as if discontent is the lot of 
man. Cultivate contentment in your boy. 
Read to him Charles Swain's poem : 

" If we cannot have all we wish upon earth, 
Let us try to be happy with less if we can. 
If wealth be not always the guerdon of worth, 
Worth, sooner than wealth, makes the happier man. 

" Is it wise to be anxious for pleasures afar, 

And the pleasures around us to slight or decry? 
Asking night for the sun, asking day for the star ? 
Let us conquer such faults, or at least let us try. 



WHAT TO TEACH A BOY. 



59 



" There ne'er was delusion more constantly shown, 

Than that wealth every charm of existence can buy ; 
As long as love, friendship, and truth are life's own, 
All hearts may be happy, if all hearts will try." 

Courtesy. 

St. Peter enjoins us to "love as brethren, 
be pitiful, be courteous." A Chinaman was 
rudely pushed into the mud by an American. 
He picked himself up very calmly, shook off 
some of the mud, bowed very politely, and 
said in a mild, reproving tone of voice, " You 
Christian, me heathen, alle samee, good-by." 
Courtesy as a Christian duty has been sorely 
neglected by Americans. " If a civil word or 
two will make a man happy," said a French 
king, " he must be wretched indeed who will 
not give them to him." William Wirt's letter 
to his daughter contains the following passage, 
worthy the attention of boys : "I want to tell 
you a secret. The way to make yourself 
pleasing to others is to show them attention. 
The whole world is like the miller at Mans- 
field, who cared for nobody — no, not he — be- 
cause nobody cared for him. And the world 
would serve you so if you gave them the same 
cause. Let every one, therefore, see that you 
do care for them by showing them what Sterne 
so happily called the small courtesies, in which 
there is no parade, whose voice is too small to 



60 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



tease, and which manifest themselves by ten- 
der and affectionate looks and little acts of 
attention, giving others the preference in every 
little enjoyment, at the table, in the field, walk- 
ing, sitting, and standing." 

Decision of Character. 

Early instill into your boy's mind decision 
of character. Undecided, purposeless boys 
make namby-pamby men, useless to them- 
selves and everybody else. They are tossed 
to and fro, carried about by every wind of 
doctrine. As Dry den puts it, 

"Everything by starts, and nothing long." 

Teach your boy to have an object in view, 
the backbone to go after it, and then stick. 
How many men slumber in nameless graves, 
or wander through a life more than wasted, 
because they had not a worthy purpose, a 
patient energy for its accomplishment, a reso- 
lution that never flinches, never flies the track. 

'Revenge. 

Teach your boy to disdain revenge. Ee- 
venge is a sin "that grows with his growth 
and strengthens with his strength." 

Your boy goes to school, and he is imposed 
upon by another boy. You say to your boy, 
" Thrash him if you can." Of course there 



WHAT TO TEACH A BOY. 



61 



is an equal chance that your boy may get 
thrashed himselfo But granting him the vic- 
tory in the fight, what is gained? Has the 
bad boy learned a lesson he won't forget, or 
will it not make him uglier and more malicious 
than ever? "What has your boy gained by 
the triumph ? Anything elevating, ennobling ? 
He has a right to defend himself or get out of 
the way, but to defend himself by thrashing 
the other boy is quite another thing. Your 
boy has gained a little reputation among the 
other boys as a fighter, which will make him 
safe from the attacks of smaller boys, but will 
be very apt to invite the attacks of the larger 
ones. Your boy's non-resistance, though he 
received a bloody nose or a broken head, would 
have made him a self-controller, a morally 
courageous, noble man, and taught the bad 
boy a lesson in morals and religion he would 
never forget. Strike the balance, fathers and 
boys, and see on which side of the balance 
sheet you would rather be — on the side of 
moral courage or of brute force. 

Honor. 

There is nothing that improves a boy's char- 
acter so much as putting him on his honor — 
trusting to his honor. I have little hope for 
the boy who is dead to the feeling of honor. 



62 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



The boy who needs to be continually looked 
after is on the road to ruin. If treating your 
boy as a gentleman does not make him a gen- 
tleman, nothing else will. 

Independence. 

Let your boy wait upon himself as much as 
possible. The more he has to depend upon 
himself, the more manly a little fellow he will 
show himself. Self-dependence will call out 
his energies, bring into exercise his talents. 
Pythagoras says, "Ability and necessity dwell 
near each other." It is not in the hot-house, 
but on the rugged Alpine cliffs, where the 
storms beat most violently, that the toughest 
plants grow. So is it with man. The wisest 
charity is to help a boy to help himself. Let 
him never hear any language but this : " You 
have your own way to make, and it depends 
on your own exertion whether you starve or 
live" 

A Trade. 

It is a rule in the imperial family of Ger- 
many that every young man shall learn a trade, 
going through a regular apprenticeship till 
he is able to do good journey-work. This is 
required because in the event of unforeseen 
changes it is deemed necessary to a manly in- 



WHAT TO TEACH A BOY. 



63 



dependence that the heir-apparent or a prince 
of the blood shonld be conscions of ability of 
making his own way in the world. This is an 
honorable custom, worthy of universal Ameri- 
can emulation. The Jews wisely held the 
maxim that every youth, whatever his position 
in life, should learn some trade. Franklin 
says, " He that hath a trade hath an estate." 
Work, however looked down upon by people 
who cannot perform it, is an honorable thing ; 
it may not be very profitable, but honorable it 
always is, and there is nothing to be ashamed 
of about it. The man who has reason to be 
ashamed is the one who does nothing, or is 
always on the lookout for an easy berth with 
good pay and no work. Let the dandy, whose 
conceit greatly exceeds his brains, be ashamed 
of his cane and kid gloves, but never let a man 
who works be ashamed of his hard hands. 
Christ was a carpenter, and Paul was a tent- 
maker. "Mere gentility sent to market won't 
buy a peck of oats." 

Half-asleep Boys. 

Encourage your boy to be industrious. 
Don't allow him to grow up half -asleep-dead- 
alive. Boys, don't live in hope with your arms 
folded. Boll up your sleeves and put your 



64 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



shoulders to the wheel and fortune will smile 
on you. Have something to do, then do it as 
if the whole world waited on your doing it. 

Perseverance. 

Lucky for the boy who can say, "In the 
bright lexicon of youth there is no such word 
as fa UP Out upon weather-cock men, who 
change with every wind ! Give us men like 
mountains, who change the winds. You can- 
not at one dash fly into eminence. You must 
hammer it out by steady and rugged blows. 
A man can get what he wants if he pays 
the price — persistent, plodding perseverance. 
Never doubt the result ; victory will be yours. 
There may be ways to fortune shorter than 
the old, dusty highway, but the staunch men 
in the community all go on this road. If you 
want to do anything, don't stand back shiver- 
ing and thinking of the cold; jump in and 
scramble through. Push and pull ! 

Fathers' Companionship with Boys. 

Happy is the father who is happy in his boy, 
and happy is the boy who is happy in his 
father. Some fathers are not wise. They re- 
serve all their social charms for strangers, are 
dull at home, forbid their children to go into 
the nicely furnished rooms, make home as irk- 



WHAT TO TEACH A BOY. 



65 



some as possible, forget that they were once 
young, deny their children every amusement 
and pleasure. Many of the sons of most pious 
fathers turn out badly because they are sur- 
feited with severe religion, not the religion of 
Christ, who was himself reproved by the proto- 
types of such severe men. 

We do not remember ever having read of a 
father's home-life more beautiful and instruct- 
ive than that of Charles Kingsley : " Because 
the rectory-house was on low ground, the rec- 
tor of Eversley, who considered violation of 
the divine laws of health a sort of acted blas- 
phemy, built his children an outdoor nursery 
on the ' Mount,' where they kept books, toys, 
and tea-things, spending long, happy days on 
the highest and loveliest point of moorland in 
the glebe ; and there he would join them when 
his parish work was done, bringing them some 
fresh treasure picked up in his walk — a choice 
wild-flower or fern or rare beetle, sometimes 
a lizard or a field-mouse, ever waking up their 
sense of wonder, calling out their powers of 
observation, and teaching them lessons out of 
Glod's great green book without their knowing 
they were learning. Out-of-doors and indoors 
the Sundays were the happiest days to the 
children, though to their father the hardest. 

" When his day's work was done there was 



66 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



always the Sunday walk, in which each bird 
and plant and brook was pointed out to the 
children as preaching sermons to Eyes, such 
as were not even dreamt of by people of the 
No-eye species. Indoors the Sunday picture- 
books were brought out and each child chose 
its subject for the father to draw, either some 
Bible story, or bird or beast or flower." 

Kingsley had a horror of corporal punish- 
ment, not merely because it tends to produce 
antagonism between parent and child, but be- 
cause he considered more than half the lying 
of children to be the result of fear of punish- 
ment. "Do not train a child," he said, "as 
men train a horse, by letting anger and pun- 
ishment be the first announcement of his hav- 
ing sinned. If you do, you induce two bad 
habits : first, the boy regards his parent with 
a kind of blind dread, as a being who may be 
offended by actions which to him are innocent, 
and whose wrath he expects to fall upon him 
at any moment in his most pure and unselfish 
happiness ; next, and worse still, the boy learns, 
not to fear sin, but the punishment of it, and 
thus he learns to lie." 

He had no " moods " with his family, for he 
cultivated, by strict discipline in the midst of 
worries and pressing business, a disengaged 
temper that always enabled him to enter into 



WHAT TO TEACH A BOY. 



67 



other people's interests, and especially into 
children's playfulness. " I wonder," he would 
say, " if there is so much laughing in any other 
home in England as in ours." He became a 
light-hearted boy in the presence of his chil- 
dren. When broken toys and nursery griefs 
were taken to his study, he was never too busy 
to mend the toy or dry the tears. 

How blessed is the son who can speak of his 
father as Charles Kingsley's eldest son does. 
u 6 Perfect love casteth out fear,' was the motto," 
he says, " on which my father based his theory 
of bringing up children. From this, and from 
the interest he took in their pursuits, their 
pleasures, trials, and even the petty details of 
their every-day life, there sprang up a friend- 
ship between father and children that increased 
in intensity and depth with years. To speak 
for myself, he was the best friend — the only 
true friend I ever had. At once he was the 
most fatherly and the most unfatherly of fa- 
thers — fatherly in that he was our most inti- 
mate friend and our self-constituted adviser ; 
unfatherly in that our feeling for him lacked 
that fear and- restraint that make boys call 
their father ' the governor.' Ours was the only 
household I ever saw in which there was no 
favoritism. Perhaps the brightest picture of 
the past that I look back to now is the draw- 



68 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



ing-room at Eversley in the evenings, when 
we were all at home and by ourselves. There 
he sat, with one hand in mother's, forgetting 
his own hard work in leading our fun and 
frolic, with a kindly smile on his lips and a 
loving light in the bright gray eye that made 
us feel that in the broadest sense of the word 
he was our father." Writing to his wife from 
the seaside, where he had gone in search of 
health, he says : " This place is perfect, but 
it seems a dream and imperfect without you. 
Kiss the darling ducks of children for me." 

However busy you are, find a few moments 
at least every day to romp with your boy. 
The father who is too dignified to carry his 
boy pick-back, or, like Luther, sing and dance 
with his children, or, like Chalmers, trundle 
the hoop, lacks not only one of the finest ele- 
ments of greatness, but fails in one of his 
plainest duties to his children. One of the in- 
alienable rights of your children is happiness 
at your hands. Remember that the children 
belong as much to you as to your wife, and it 
is only just to her that the little time you are 
in the house you should relieve her of those 
cares that are her daily portion. 

You cannot afford to let your boy grow up 
without weaving yourself into the memory of 
his golden days. Norman McLeod says : " 0 



WHAT TO TEACH A BOY. 



69 



sunshine of youth, let it shine on ! Let love 
flow out fresh and full, unchecked by any rule 
but what love creates, and pour itself down 
without stint into the young heart. Make the 
days of boyhood happy, for other days of labor 
and sorrow must come, when the blessing of 
those dear eyes and clasping hands and sweet 
caresses will, next to the love of Grod from 
whence they flow, save the man from losing 
faith in the human heart, help to deliver him 
from the curse of selfishness, and be an Eden 
in the evening when he is driven forth into 
the wilderness of life." Another writes : " The 
richest heritage that parents can give is a 
happy childhood, with tender memories of 
father and mother. This will brighten the 
coming days when the children have gone out 
from the sheltering home, it will be a safe- 
guard in times of temptation and a conscious 
help amid the stern realities of life." 

Boys on the Streets. 

Don't turn your boys out to spend the night 
— you don't know where. There are thousands 
of parents in this city who think that their 
boys never drink, but there is not a gilded 
saloon with which the boys are not familiar. 
There are many young men who, when they 
return to their fathers' houses, are supposed to 



70 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



have been visiting respectable friends of the 
family. This is a mere guise. They would 
not dare to tell the truth as to where and with 
whom they had been. Don't allow your boy to 
go at night to see the sights or to find pleas- 
ure in the amusements of the city unless you 
go with him, until he is grown to man's estate 
and his habits are formed. 

There are many things of which ignorance 
is bliss and wisdom folly — things which a man 
cannot learn without being damaged all his 
life. " As an eel, if he were to wriggle across 
your carpet, would leave a slime which no 
brush can take off, so there are many things 
which no person can know and ever recover 
from the knowledge of." 

The Friend of Liberty and Pleasure. 

I am known, and want to be known, as the 
friend of liberty and pleasure. I rebuke those 
who would turn that young and joyous creat- 
ure into the stiff and silent statue, the monk- 
like figure, or the unsmiling devotee. It is 
a cold, cheerless, heartless asceticism and not 
Christianity that cannot see the boy's spark- 
ling eye, his sunlit countenance, hear his elas- 
tic step, the merry note of his laughter, and 
the music of his cheerful voice. I believe 
in fun. There is fun, innocent fun, and you 



WHAT TO TEACH A BOY. 



71 



don't have to go in the paths of sin to find it. 
I appreciate hilarity, good jokes, and fnn. 
Hear it, boys ! There is glorious fun in this 
world, and on the side of right, in the path of 
virtue. Getting up in the morning with a 
splitting headache, disordered liver, and shat- 
tered nerves, turned out of employment, cast 
down in spirits, character wrecked, father dis- 
graced, mother's heart broken. Alas for that 
kind of fun ! 0 my soul, stand back from 
such fun ! If you want to make your boy's 
destruction sure, give him unwatched liberty 
after dark. 

Henry Ward Beecher writes : " I do not be- 
lieve in bringing up the young to know life, 
as it is said. I should just as soon think of 
bringing up a child by cutting some of the 
cords of his body and lacerating his nerves, 
and scarring and tattooing him, and making an 
Indian out of him outright as an element of 
beauty, as I should think of developing his 
manhood by bringing him up to see life — to 
see its abominable lusts, to see its hideous in- 
carnations of wit, to see its infernal wicked- 
ness, to see its extravagant and degrading 
scenes, to see its miserable carnalities, to see 
its imaginations set on fire of hell, to see all 
those temptations and delusions which lead to 
perdition. Nobody gets over the sight of these 



72 SANCTIFIED SPICE. 

things. They who see them always carry 
scars. They are burned. The scar remains. 
And to let the young go out where evil ap- 
pears, where the frequenters of dens of iniquity 
can come within their reach, to let them go 
where the young gather together to cheer with 
bad wit, to let them go where they will be ex- 
posed to such temptations — why, a parent is 
insane that will do it. To say, 4 A child must 
be hardened ; he has got to get tough some- 
how, and you may as well put him in the vat 
and let him tan' — is that family education? 
Is that Christian nurture ? Is that bringing a 
child up in the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord?" 



XL 



A SUMMER DAY IN WATEK STREET. 

In company with a trusty friend, one of 
earth's greatest blessings, I visited Water 
Street when the thermometer registered ninety 
degrees in the shade. I started early that I 
might gain some knowledge of the " free-ice " 
stations. 

What blessings this charity brings to these 
dark places of abject poverty ! To stand for 
an hour at any one of these stations and watch 
the creatures who creep there to receive the 
blessing of fifteen pounds of ice, to behold the 
eagerness with which they make approach, 
the anxiety with which they push forward, the 
glistening gladness in their eyes as they bear 
off the trophy, is only to comprehend in a 
small measure the good done by this practical 
philanthropy. 

Here they come and crowd, men, women 
and children, of all kindreds and tongues, the 
dwarf, scurvy and scrub of humanity. Some- 
times the crowd is so dense that angry com- 

73 



74 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



petition follows. Boys and girls with emaci- 
ated bodies, feverish lips, hollow eyes, dirty 
all over, are on the outside and watching for 
the chips of ice that fall to the ground. One 
little girl to secure her prize sat on her ice 
until her competitors had withdrawn. 

This free-ice station on Water Street is a 
chunk of a heaven on the brink of a hell. As 
I stood near the unwashed wretchedness, my 
high hope and fervent prayer was that the 
generosity of New Yorkers might next year 
open such stations in every needy part of our 
city. 

You need not walk far down "Water Street 
to find outlandish sights. Between a barrel 
and a box there was stretched on a stone, with 
head on a door-sill, a woman, a mother, it 
seemed — 

" A drinking dame, 
A sight of shame ! " 

Yet how sadly common is this spectacle in 
Water Street ! I write of this misery because 
my memory refuses to forget this picture of 
pity — this blasphemy on womankind, eyes 
filled with water, asleep, pimpled cheeks and 
red nose, telling the sad story of her sin and 
shame. 

"Bacchus well his sheep he knows, 
For he marks them on the nose." 



A SUMMER DAY IN WATER STREET. 75 

But the poor little babe would draw tears 
to the eyes of our gayest butterflies of society 
and the masculine grasshoppers which dance 
attendance upon them. It was ragged, dirty ; 
want of food was manifested in its sunken 
little eyes, its withered cheeks, its bony little 
fingers, and its frail little ankles. There was 
the restless little fellow moaning and groaning 
to get his dinner from a breast whose mater- 
nity the demon drink had clutched by the 
throat and choked to death. A diamond in a 
gutter ! If drunkenness follows hard on the 
heels of moderation, so a harlot may carry a 
rose on her bosom. 

A few doors from the drunken mother and 
unfortunate babe was seen a little boy about 
seven years old, comely, clean and bright, a 
little cherub that you would like to have play 
with your children. His shoes were delicate, 
his stockings matched his velvet suit, and 
his head was covered with a new white hat. 
There was an artistic knot in his ribbon neck- . 
tie. He was sweet ! I instinctively said, 
" That boy has a Christian mother, or there is 
a mystery about his life, a romance of some 
kind. The parentage of that boy is not found 
in the slums." That boy came in the ruin of 
a beautiful young woman. In her face can 
still be traced the lines of beauty. Shame has 



76 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



driven her and her neat little care to this 
street, there to wither and melt like snow in 
the spring, shedding burning tears of sadness 
over man's villainy and woman's inhumanity 
to woman, which 

"Has made countless thousands mourn." 

Among many species of animals, if one of 
their number is wounded and falls, he is at 
once torn to pieces by his fellows. Traces of 
this animal cruelty are seen in men to-day, 
but especially in women. Let a woman fall 
from virtue and nine-tenths of her sisters will 
turn and tear her to pieces, and the next day 
the man who robbed her of virtue, broke her 
parents' hearts, and drove her to the street, 
will be smiled on and almost congratulated 
on his success. The cruelty of woman to 
woman is perfectly wolfish. Shame ! oh, 
shame! Reverse the action. Loathing for 
the gay Lothario who accomplished her ruin, 
and tenderness for the wounded sister. 

As the silver in the raw and rough matrix 
still sparkles, so there are glimpses of nobility 
in the ruins of the slums. Here in the junc- 
tion of the street and alley were two little girls 
about six years of age, short and chubby, with 
round faces and wild hair. They were dressed 



A SUMMER DAY IN WATER STREET. 77 

each in a single garment of calico, which 
clothed them, in spots, to their knees. The 
dirt seemed to be glned on them. The mo- 
ment I was looking at them, one had fonnd in 
the gutter a piece of watermelon rind with a 
slight margin of red in it. She was so pleased. 
With generosity sparkling in her eyes, she 
broke it in two and gave the half to her play- 
mate. While looking at her little friend with 
an affectionate eye, she caught a glimpse of 
me. Not used to people to whose kind call 
the children troop, they ran behind a barrel to 
enjoy their luxury. Here were the signs of 
the noblest traits in human nature — impulses 
of the divinest character. What seeds of 
possibilities ! Give the little ones a chance 
to become decent, to be suitably clothed, well- 
fed, educated, and Christianized, and they will 
be a blessing to their race. But let them be 
kicked into a grudge against society, snubbed, 
starved, and sunk in crime, they will grow up 
to curse mankind and hate all that is good. 

There are seventy-five thousand children in 
New York City worse than homeless, friend- 
less and godless. It is this population that 
furnishes seventy-five per cent, of our crimi- 
nals. If we do not Christianize them, they 
will heathenize us. 



78 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



We send good missionaries to save the 
babies of China, but let the devil take the 
babies at home. A minister lately told a 
pathetic story of the miseries of infant life in 
China — of the babes who were left in the 
streets at night to die of exposure ; four thou- 
sand were saved by the missionary women. 
Now that preacher did not know that the same 
thing is going on at home. Not a willful ex- 
posure to the cold and heat, but a compulsory 
neglect. Could that preacher go with me 
through some of the benighted streets of New 
York and Brooklyn, he could see hundreds 
of babes in the agonies of death, dying by the 
inch of heat, of cold, of want of food and care. 
Let him see their puny and skinny little hands, 
the limbs withering with starvation, eyes sunk- 
en or bulging out of their sockets. They are 
eaten up with fever and with filth. Have we 
home missionaries to go out and look after 
these? Do our churches take up contribu- 
tions to minister to these little ones of our 
own cities ! I go in for missions ; but so long 
as there are, according to reliable data, three 
hundred and forty-five thousand persons in 
New York City without the Gospel and the 
benefits of a Christian civilization, I am op- 
posed to a cent going to Zanzibar or Timbuc- 
too. Still it must be confessed that as a rule 



A SUMMEE DAY IN WATER STREET. 79 

the men who give nothing to foreign missions 
give nothing to home missions. 

The police were noticeably absent from Wa- 
ter Street. Abandoned women are allowed to 
stand in the doors to solicit and invite the in- 
nocent into their dens. Vice flourishes in the 
Fourth Precinct with the most brazen-faced 
audacity, either through police complicity or 
police stupidity. 

The houses in Water Street are not fit for 
habitation. No conveniences, bad ventilation, 
filthy sewers and unclean alleys ; whole fam- 
ilies occupy one room, eat, drink, cook and 
sleep in a room ten feet by ten. I have found 
instances of from ten to seventeen people hud- 
dled together in one or two rooms, the whole 
space not being more than ten by twenty feet. 
A dozen odors rush into your nostrils at the 
same time, and each one distinct from the 
other. The way they cook in the slums is a 
study. They do not know what it is to taste 
a good meal. Weary with toil, they crave for 
something to eat and drink. They drink be- 
cause they have not enough to eat, or because 
what they eat does not satisfy. 

It seems to me that what is needed very 
much is a mission to teach them how to look 
well to the ways of the household. It is not 
theology they want so much as some knowl- 



80 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



edge in the sciences of bake-ology, boil-ology, 
cook-ology, stitch-ology, and mend-ology. 

To work successfully in the slums a great 
deal of sanctified common sense is needed. A 
missionary in Water Street told me that not 
long ago a minister came to her and told her 
that, walking down Water Street, he was in- 
vited to enter the abode of one of these de- 
mons of darkness. He went in and began to 
talk of home, holiness, and heaven. The girl 
burst into tears. He thought his words were 
doing the good intended, and that he might 
have a better chance to speak and pray with 
her he hired a room, paying a dollar for it, 
that he might unmolested show her the way 
of life. This man was good, but he was green. 
He had learning, but it was of a kind that 
makes its possessors so magnificently ridicu- 
lous that the simplest plowman could perceive 
his shortness of wit. He is as much out of 
place in the pulpit as if a salmon should climb 
a tree. 

In the evening I visited the old McAuley 
Mission. I heard the testimony of drunkards 
redeemed, some of long and others of recent 
experience. Many bore the marks of having 
not yet had time to get good clothes and to 
wear off the effects of the distilled damnation 
which had well-nigh destroyed them. These 



A SUMMEE DAY IN WATEE STEEET. 81 

men did not parade their sins in their testi- 
monies, bnt praised Grod. They impressed me 
with the fact that their godliness was not only 
from the lips outward. It was not the noisy 
zeal that sought the praise of man. " A hand- 
ful of holy life is worth a ton of tall talk." 



XII. 



PALM-TREE CHRISTIANS. 

"The righteous shall flourish like a palm-tree." — David. 

The palm branches shoot upward, and there 
are none that grow out of the side as in other 
trees ; so the Christian seeks the things above, 
where Christ dwells. Rearing its stem and 
diffusing its shade as a shelter over the ex- 
hausted traveler, how beautifully does this 
tree exemplify the Christian who becomes a 
shade to the friendless, the destitute, and the 
afflicted. Like the palm, the Christian must 
become a shade to others. 

The palm-tree yields abundant fruit. " The 
dates hung from these trees," says a learned 
traveler, " in such large and tempting clusters 
that we climbed to the tops of some of them 
and carried away with us large branches with 
their fruit. "Wherever the date-tree is found 
in these dreary deserts, it not only presents a 
supply of salutary food for men and camels, 
but nature has so wonderfully contrived the 

82 



PALM-TREE CHRISTIANS. 



83 



plant that its first offering is accessible to man 
alone, and the mere circumstance of its pres- 
ence in all seasons of the year is a never-fail- 
ing indication of fresh water near its roots. 
A considerable part of the inhabitants of Eu- 
rope, Arabia, and Persia subsist almost en- 
tirely upon its fruit. They boast also of its 
medicinal virtues. Their camels feed upon 
the date-stones; from the leaves and branches 
are made an astonishing variety of domestic 
furniture and utensils ; from the fibers of the 
boughs are manufactured thread, ropes and 
rigging ; the body of the tree furnishes fuel ; 
and from one variety of the tree meal has 
been extracted and has been used for food." 
Are not thus the righteous pictured forth by 
this tree ? Eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, 
feet to the lame, clothes to the naked, food to 
the hungry — they are known, like the secret 
wells of the desert, by the living verdure about 
them; like the palm, whose "presence is a 
never-failing indication of fresh water near 
its roots," their presence is felt by the happi- 
ness they produce, the good seeds they sow, 
and the atmosphere of light and holiness 
which diffuse a grateful fragrance through all 
with whom they come in contact. 

The palm-tree grows in the purest soil ; it 
will not grow in filthy places. The righteous 



84 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



flourish best in a pure soil, " in the garden," 
the house of God, where the pure Gospel is 
preached. 

The palm-tree when young is a very weak 
plant; it can hardly stand by itself; and 
therefore usually three or four are planted 
together, and by that means they strengthen 
one another. " They that be planted in the 
house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts 
of our God." The righteous when first con- 
verted are as babes in Christ ; weak and fee- 
ble, they need the help and support of their 
brethren ; but when planted together in God's 
vineyard they strengthen one another, thus 
showing the excellency of Christian fellow- 
ship. " Strengthen ye the weak hands and 
confirm the feeble knees." Palm-trees join 
and clasp and grow one to the other, and by 
that means flourish exceedingly. So the right- 
eous, being planted together in the same church 
in gospel fellowship, ought so to join, clasp and 
cleave in love to one another so to become as 
it were one tree, and thus be made strong. 

The palm-tree is always green. It does not 
cast its leaves or fade. "And he shall be like 
a tree planted by the rivers of water, that 
bringeth forth his fruit in his season ; his leaf 
also shall not wither ; and whatsoever he doeth 
shall prosper." The Lord's trees are all ever- 



PALM-TKEE CHRISTIANS. 



85 



greens, yet, unlike evergreens in our country, 
they are all fruit-bearers. 

The palm-tree is uninfluenced by those alter- 
nations of the seasons which affect other trees. 
Winter's copious rains do not rejoice it over- 
much, nor does it droop under the drought 
and burning sun of summer. There it stands, 
with its tall and verdant canopy and the sil- 
very flashes of its waving plumes, looking 
calmly down upon the world below, and pa- 
tiently yielding its large clusters of golden 
fruit from generation to generation. It brings 
forth fruit in old age — the best dates are pro- 
duced when the tree is from fifty to one hun- 
dred years old. 

"The plants of grace shall ever live ; 
Nature decays, but grace must thrive ; 
Time, that doth all things else impair, 
Still makes them flourish strong and fair." 

The young Christian is lovely, like a tree in 
the blossoms of spring ; the aged Christian is 
valuable, like a tree in autumn bending with 
ripe fruit. In the old disciple we may there- 
fore look for something superior — more dead- 
ness to the world, more disposition to make 
sacrifice for the sake of others, more richness 
of experience, and more confidence in God. 

Neither weight nor violence can make the 
palm grow crooked, but the more it is op- 



86 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



posed, the more it flourishes. So, if we bear 
up bravely uuder trial, we give evidence to the 
world that our piety is invincible and calm. 
Like the waves in the storm, the righteous 
are frequently tossed to and fro by the trials 
of life; but, like them, they are uninjured, 
for soon the tempest of suffering subsides, and 
the light of heaven sleeps upon their bosom. 



XIII. 



SOME SAMPLES FEOM SOME SAMPLE-KOOMS. 

To show the young men of my congregation 
what moral contagion is hidden behind the 
glazed windows and curtained doors of the 
grog-shops of New York City, I secured, at 
various times, samples from some sample- 
rooms, such as would be sold to any casual 
customer, and a careful analysis developed 
the following results : 

A half-pint of gin contained neutral spir- 
its, rotten corn, juniper-berries, turpentine 
and vitriol. I put a match to a small quantity 
of this Holland (?) gin, and the blue flame it 
burned would have done a drinker good. I 
took the white of an egg, quite equal in sub- 
stance to the fluids of the brain; I poured 
over it a little of this gin, and the albumi- 
nous substance slowly congealed, thickened 
and clotted. It lost its clearness and became 
stringy and compact, and finally hardened. 
It is the chemical effect of alcohol on vital 
substance, exactly what goes on in your brain 

87 



88 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



to a greater or less degree when you drink 
alcohol in any shape or form. A raw oyster, 
which is very digestible, whiskey hardened 
and toughened as leather. Such in a degree 
is the effect produced by the contact of alco- 
hol with the stomach. 

In half a pint of whiskey we found neutral 
spirits, glycerine, sulphate of zinc, chromic 
acid, unslacked lime, creosote and fusel oil. 
As to fusel oil, it is poisonous enough, so 
that, according to Dr. Blythe, the highest 
authority on adulterations, "fifteen drachms 
evaporated in a box where a cat had been con- 
fined rendered the animal insensible in less 
than an hour, Forty drops of fusel oil ad- 
ministered to a kitten after seventeen min- 
utes caused palpitation of the heart, irregular 
breathing, and in twenty-two minutes uncon- 
sciousness. A rabbit was killed by two 
drachms taken in the stomach. Eeasoning 
from these experiences, anything like half a 
grain of fusel oil, per ounce of whiskey, is cer- 
tainly extremely injurious to health." 

The brandy sold in the average saloon is 
made up of the refuse of grapes, fusel oil, 
methyl alcohol, tannin, sulphuric acid, lead, 
copper, zinc and cayenne pepper. 

Port-wine contained neutral spirits, glyc- 
erine, licorice, flavored with zinc, mercury, 



SOME SAMPLES FKOM SOME SAMPLE-KOOMS. 89 

antimony and several acids, fortified by 
brandy plastered with gypsum, and mixed 
with inferior wines ; salt of tartar and ether 
are often added to give an appearance of age, 
and alum to increase the brilliancy of hue. 
There is perhaps nearly a hundred times as 
much " port- wine " (so-called from Oporto) sold 
and drunk as can be made from all the grapes 
raised in the region of Oporto, including the 
whole Douro Yalley. 

If the whole Douro Valley were a thousand 
miles long, instead of only sixty, it could not 
furnish grapes enough to provide all this ocean 
of port- wine. The whole world is drinking 
wine out of the handful of grapes grown on 
the banks of a small creek in Portugal ! 

Madeira grows 30,000 barrels of wine yearly, 
and America drinks 50,000 barrels of Madeira 
wine ! A Madeira wine is made in this coun- 
try at a profit of five hundred per cent, which 
few can tell from the genuine, by mixing with 
cider, rain-water, sulphuric acid and other in- 
gredients. California wine is made in New 
Jersey, sold at twenty cents per gallon, and 
at a thousand per cent, profit. 

The vineyards of Europe have been devas- 
tated by the phylloxera and various diseases. 
In France and Italy three-fourths of the vine- 
yards have been wholly destroyed within five 



90 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



years, and the remaining fourth is rapidly 
yielding to the plague. Five years ago Spain 
and G-errnany produced six times the amount 
of grapes harvested last year. The vinelands 
of Europe, where wine has been produced con- 
tinuously for one thousand years, are for the 
most part worn out. The Old World will soon 
have to rely on us for the production of its 
supply of wines. Our country is already the 
largest wine-growing district in the world. 
We furnish a million times more baskets of 
champagne (with exact imitations of foreign 
brands) than are put up out of the pure juice 
in all the champagne districts of Europe. In 
California alone there are forty-five thousand 
acres planted in vines, and last year there 
were produced from this acreage eighty-seven 
million gallons of wine, valued at twenty-four 
million dollars. 

Beer is frightfully adulterated. Read the 
"Reports on the Examination of Beers," by 
the State Board of Health. Barley, malt, 
hops, yeast, and water, only, make pure beer. 
J. P. Battershall, Chemist of the United States 
Laboratory, says that "any ingredient other 
than these must be regarded as an adul- 
terant." 

The brewer's own book, " Preparation of 
Malt and Fabrication of Beer," by Thausing, 



SOME SAMPLES FKOM SOME SAMPLE-EOOMS. 91 

Schwarz & Bauer, says: "The reason for 
using malt surrogates will always be to reduce 
the expense of brewing beer." When the fight 
was made in the House of Representatives 
against " the use of substitutes for barley, 
malt and hops in the manufacture of beer," 
fierce opposition to the bill came from the 
Glen Cove Starch Company. The business of 
this company was the manufacture of glucose. 
Glucose is a chemical result of starch and sul- 
phuric acid. Its economic uses are none other 
save as a substitute for better materials — an 
adulterant and a debaser. 

Read the brewer's book already mentioned, 
also " Brewing," in the Library of Universal 
Knowledge, Child's "Every Man His Own 
Brewer," and Morice's "Brewing Malt Liq- 
uors," and you will find substitutes something 
like these : 

Ingredients of a warming nature. — Pepper, 
capsicum, cloves, ginger, spice, vinegar ; acetic, 
tartaric, citric, butyric, nitric, sulphuric and 
prussic acids ; nitric and acetic ethers ; spirits 
of niter; oils of vitriol, turpentine, cassia, 
caraway, cloves ; extracts of japonica, of bit- 
ter almonds, orris root and angelican root, 
grains of paradise, poppy seeds, aloes, cochi- 
neal, black ants and Spanish juice. 

To give taste and astringency. — Bruised 



92 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



raisins, dried blackberries, peaches and cher- 
ries, orange peel, coriander seed, white oak 
bark, tannic acid, kino, rhatany, catechu, cara- 
way, cardamom and fennel seeds, wormwood, 
alum, copperas, sulphate of iron and sulphate 
of copper. 

To prevent sourness. — Use sugar, honey, 
molasses, licorice, alum, opium, gentian, 
quassia, aloes, cocculus indicus (the rankest 
poison without any known antidote), egg- 
shells, sulphate of lime, nutgalls, etc. 

To correct unnatural tastes. — Lime-water, 
carbonate of lime and of soda, nitrate of pot- 
ash, caustic potash, saleratus, sugar of lead, 
etc. 

For coloring matters. — Burnt sugar, beet 
juice, dried apples and peaches, elder-berries, 
molasses, red saunders, logwood and sulphuric 
acid. This catalogue suffices to account for 
the fact that many breweries (laboratories) 
contain a well-equipped drug-store as part of 
their outfit. Think of introducing into the 
stomach such fluid nastiness and poisons ! 

Some of my readers may recall the wrathful 
challenge that the chairman of the United 
States Brewers' Association thundered at 
the writer through a letter in the New York 
Herald, for the proof that the American beer 
was as dangerously adulterated as charged. 



SOME SAMPLES FKOM SOME SAMPLE-ROOMS. 93 



He admitted that foreign substances were put 
in beer " to keep it," and only denied they 
were dangerous. The American brewers claim 
that pure lager made out of nothing but bar- 
ley, malt, hops, yeast, and water will not 
"keep." It "keeps" in Bavaria and other 
countries which export beer to America, 
Laws there prevent other ingredients than 
those named being used. Why will it not 
"keep" here? In one of our daily papers 
there appeared recently an advertisement of 
the leading brewery in America, which had 
the following : " Corn Beer Manufacturers 
4 not in it.' No corn or corn preparations are 
used in brewing. Our motto is: 1 Not How 
Gheap, but How G-ood.'" Why have the 
brewers always opposed a statutory definition 
that beer should be made from barley, malt, 
hops, yeast, and water, as prescribed by the 
laws of other countries ! 



XIV. 



WHY WE SHOULD SERVE CHRIST. 

The life of a Christian is a life of love from 
the beginning to the end. St. John tells us 
" we love him because he first loved us." The 
Greek words " we love " are not in the indica- 
tive but in the subjunctive, making this an 
exhortation, " Let us love him because he first 
loved us." Our hearts must be conscious of 
a personal love toward Christ before we can 
love him. It is possible to serve Christ as a 
duty rather than as a privilege. We do many 
things under the idea that God expects it of 
us, and we are afraid to resist his will. So 
long as we love Christ merely because he loves 
us, our motives are actually selfish. God ap- 
peals to this self-love in our heart, but only 
that through it he might lead us up to bet- 
ter things. When we begin to recognize the 
claims of God we may, like Moses, have " re- 
spect unto the recompense of the reward " ; but 
a passionate love for Jesus must follow after 
we have stretched our hands to embrace him 

94 



WHY WE SHOULD SERVE CHRIST. 95 



as the Saviour we require. The true ground 
of love to Christ is the excellence of his own 
character, apart from the question whether 
we are to be benefited or not. The highest 
ground of exhortation to love Christ is not the 
benefits which we are to receive, but because 
his character is infinitely worthy of love. So 
thought Francis Xavier : 

" I love thee, O my God ! but not 

For what I hope thereby ; 
Nor yet because who love thee not 

Must die eternally. 
I love thee, O my God ! and still 

I ever will love thee, 
Solely because my God thou art, 

Who first hast loved me. 

"For me to lowest depths of woe 

Thou didst thyself abase ; 
For me didst bear the cross, the shame, 

And manifold disgrace ; 
For me didst suffer pains unknown, 

Blood sweat and agony, 
Yes, death itself, — all, all for me, 

For me, thine enemy. 

" Then shall I not, O Saviour mine ! 

Shall I not love thee well? 
Not with the hope of winning heaven, 

Nor of escaping hell ; 
Not with the hope of earning aught, 

Not seeking a reward, 
But freely, freely as thyself 

Hast loved me, O Lord ! " 



XV. 



HERESY TRIALS. 

Heresy trials have been few and far between 
in our theological history. Lyman Beecher's 
trial stands first, and that record should be 
kept sacred in our history, along with the his- 
tory of the burning of witches in Salem and 
the hanging of Quakers on Boston Common, 
to show to what bigoted extremes the self- 
styled defenders of orthodoxy can go. Albert 
Barnes was compelled to give up his pulpit 
for a time because some passage was found 
in his splendid commentaries which was con- 
strued into teaching a disbelief in a limited 
atonement. The church remembers that trial 
with the blush of shame. David Swing was 
ruthlessly driven from the pale of the church 
because he said things that did not square 
with the exact phrases of the Westminster 
Confession. That trial was a spiritual calam- 
ity to Chicago. The majority to bring Dr. 
Briggs to trial was not brought about by the 
clergymen, but by the vote of laymen dis- 

96 



HERESY TRIALS. 



97 



tinguished mainly for inquisitorial dictation. 
Parliamentary decorum was disregarded in a 
fashion that would disgrace a political caucus. 
I do not indorse all the views of Dr. Briggs. 
My pulpit is an orthodox carriage, from which 
I do not believe in firing a heterodox gun. 
But the trouble is that every man considers 
his doxy orthodoxy. I believe that free re- 
search and free speech is the sacred right of 
the pulpit, .and individuality of thought in re- 
ligion the immortal principle of Protestantism. 
The Westminster divines were as much divided 
as the New York Presbytery on the Articles 
in the Confession of Faith, and the things that 
they carried were carried by a mere majority, 
with strong protest against them. Shall what 
they did more than two hundred years ago 
constitute the spectacles through which we are 
to look upon our Bibles to-day ? The man for 
the hour is not he who lives to defend the 
Thirty-nine Articles or the Five Institutes, 
but he who lives to make this world wiser, 
holier and happier. The creeds of the middle 
ages have no more to do with the Christianity 
of Christ than the battle of Marathon had with 
the defeat of Benjamin Harrison. The min- 
ister who gets into a raging fever of passion 
because one of his brethren dared to express 
an opinion not indorsed by the church fathers 



98 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



(church grandmothers !) is certainly a queer 
being to live in this progressive age. Just so 
long as the church busies herself punishing 
men for having an opinion there will be in- 
difference to religion, and the world will shrug 
its shoulders at the clergy and say with Dean 
Swift : " There are three sexes — men, women 
and preachers." Animosities among the fol- 
lowers of the Prince of Peace ! What an in- 
consistency ! How unfortunate it is for Chris- 
tianity for her ministers to spend year after 
year in wrangling, when in New York City 
alone there are three hundred and forty-five 
thousand souls as unreached by the Gospel 
as are the blackest blacks in blackest Africa. 
The forces of iniquity are presenting a solid, 
compact front, while Christian men debate, 
wrangle and quarrel about non-essentials. 
Now this thing must stop. Public sentiment 
is against it, and the man who starts unneces- 
sary discussion upon theological points acts 
wrongly. Its direct tendency is to prevent 
the conversion of souls. It serves to distract 
the thoughts of those who might otherwise 
become serious, and leads them into fruitless 
discussion. It tends to separate men who 
would otherwise love each other. Oh, for a 
divine voice to utter the command, "Peace, 
be still ! " 



XVI. 



SPIRITUALISM. 

Spiritualism is a mixture of puerility and 
stolidity, a superfluous, superficial and super- 
stitious speculation. It converts the dead 
into busybodies, changes the beatified into 
phantom tramps and spectral gossips. Spir- 
itualists make it their proud boast that they 
are free from the bondage of superstition, 
and singularly enough greedily render their 
judgment captive to the gossip, garrulity and 
guesses of contemptible outcasts. 

The main staple of spiritualism is decep- 
tion. No wonder it chooses the darkness. 
What a silly thing it is ! Picture to yourself 
a circle of men and women — lights out — sit- 
ting with clasped hands, singing dolorously, 
"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the 
' grave, while his soul goes marching on." And 
for what 1 To bring down the glory-enthroned 
father, mother, husband, wife or child ; crawl- 
ing under the table, ringing tea-bells before 
supper is ready. 

99 



100 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



It is a sad sight. I do not wonder that an 
old Greek philosopher said, "The diviners" 
(that is, spiritualists) "make one think that 
man, instead of being the most intelligent, is 
the most stupid of animals." 

Mediums, clairvoyants and "psychometric 
readers" denounce one another as frauds, 
and in this one particular they tell the truth. 
Who are your professional mediums ! Would 
those who visit them receive them into their 
homes on terms of social equality 1 Suppose 
our departed dead could communicate with 
us, would they go to entire strangers, to 
people with whom when living they would 
not associate, and tell to such social outcasts 
and arrant, unmitigated humbugs the most 
sacred things — things which if they were liv- 
ing they would tell in no ears but ours 1 

The very thought of such a possibility is 
degrading and insulting to the memory of the 
sainted dead. Would it be consistent with 
the character of a holy Grod to give his reve- 
lation for a financial consideration through 
such universally acknowledged disreputable 
characters by sending his spirit under a ta-* 
ble or into a cabinet to peep and mutter at 
men? 

The messages that purport to come from 
the spirit world make us think our departed 



SPIKITUALISM. 



101 



friends had an attack of softening of the brain 
after they became spirits. 

The cunningly devised and cleverly exe- 
cuted tricks employed in spiritualism have all 
been exposed and proven frauds. 

Spiritualists claim that their doctrine is 
important to society ; that it proves the future 
life. But if that future life is to be judged 
by the disclosures made of it by the repre- 
sentatives of spiritualism, we are forced to 
conclude that the inhabitants of that future 
life are souls in the process of losing their 
mental powers — souls destined soon to become 
extinct; and under such circumstances eter- 
nity is not attractive enough to convince a 
man that it is worth striving for. 

The Bible teaches that men may deal with 
spirits and be entirely under their control, 
but it also tells us the character of the spirits, 
" lying wonders," " seducing spirits and doc- 
trines of devils which will shipwreck our 
faith," "wicked," "unclean," "familiar spir- 
its," " possessed with devils," and this is how 
God speaks of this delusion: "I will be a 
swift witness against the sorcerer." "There 
shall be among you a consulter of familiar 
spirits, or wizard, or' necromancer, for they 
that do these things are an abomination unto 
the Lord." 



102 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



The Bible speaks of angels appearing to 
men. But angels are not the spirits of dead 
men, they aro an entirely different order of 
beings. When angels appeared to men no 
mediums were used, no admission charged, 
no circles formed, no turning-down of lights, 
no cabinets, no planchettes. The angels came 
directly to the persons to whom they were 
sent, and never in a darkened room. 

The Bible tells us all we need to know 
about the hereafter. It is sacrilege to pry 
into that which is none of our business. 



XVII. 



COMPANIONSHIP WITH FOOLS. 

The first step the devil takes in seeking to 
compass a young man's destruction is to give 
him a fool for a companion. It is easy to find 
friends — of a sort; they freely offer to take 
you all about town ; show you any place you 
wish to visit; you, of course, paying the 
expenses. The papers tell us about the confi- 
dence tricks played upon the verdant stran- 
gers, but they say nothing about the hundreds 
of city-bred young men, who ought to know 
better, who are yearly caught in the net of a 
poisonous friendship and are snared to their 
eternal ruin. 

Beware, as for your life, of all companion- 
ships like these : the loafer ; the gay Lothario ; 
the skeptic ; the untruthful man ; the Sabbath- 
breaker ; the profane swearer ; the boaster of 
his wild deeds and vile associates ; avoid, in 
short, every man whom you would not see 
seated in your own home shadow, sharing 

103 



104 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



the unsuspected confidence of a father's, a 
mother's, or a sister's gentle love. 

Bemember that the assassin's dagger, driven 
into your mother's heart, would be a thousand 
times more merciful than the faintest whisper 
in your childhood's home of the story of your 
dissipation, your dishonesty, your intemper- 
ance, your impurity. 

Hearts are the soul of honor — true friend- 
ship can be made only between true men. 
Elect as your friends your superiors, if pos- 
sible; your equals, at least; your inferiors, 
never. 

" Save me from my friends," is an old ex- 
clamation. The friend who led you into the 
abyss of sensuality or asked you to take the 
first drink has proven your enemy, and per- 
haps if he had blown your brains out he 
would have been a better friend. Alas ! 
alas! for the direful contagion of evil com- 
panionship! Take counsel with wise and 
thoughtful men. Choose for your bosom 
friends men who will foster your piety and 
make you wiser, better and holier men. Lord 
Brooks was so proud of his friendship with 
Sir Philip Sydney that he chose for his epi- 
taph : " Here lies Sir Philip Sydney's friend." 

Choose friendships that are elevating. Walk 
not in the counsel of the ungodly ; stand not 



COMPANIONSHIP WITH FOOLS. 105 

in the way of sinners ; sit not in the seat of 
the scornful ; spend your evenings amid cheer- 
ful enjoyments, ennobling elevations and use- 
ful ameliorations. 

Be it yours with the Psalmist to say, "I 
am a companion of them that fear thee, and 
of them that keep thy precepts." 



XVIII. 



RACE-TRACK GAMBLING. 

Only those people who have investigated 
the subject have any idea of the enormity and 
magnitude of the vice of gambling, especially 
that form of gambling inseparably allied with 
race-tracks. The turf -gamblers have fastened 
themselves upon the necks of our courts, ju- 
ries and legislatures. The proprietor of the 
most notorious race-track in New Jersey is 
the dictator of the State legislature, and this 
week had his " starter " elected speaker. The 
chief income of the racing associations is the 
money paid for gambling privileges, and so 
great is the income derived from this source 
that the stockholders of the racing associa- 
tions become enormously wealthy, and the 
starters and jockeys are among the highest 
salaried men in the land. The vast sums of 
money required to maintain these associations 
come from the boys and young men who make 
up the multitude of the patrons of the pool- 
rooms. The prisons of New York and New 

106 



RACE-TRACK GAMBLING. 



107 



Jersey are full of young men who ascribe 
their forgery, thefts and embezzlements to 
their infatuation for pool-room gambling. No 
form of gambling offers such temptations, and 
the very fact that it requires so little money is 
why the first theft from employers is so easily 
made. Superintendent Byrnes says, " We are 
sending men to prison right along on account 
of the race-gambling craze." 

I personally know of many homes that have 
been destroyed and the lives of young men 
blighted in the pool-rooms. I don't believe 
that the cultivation of a horse's speed is a sin. 
But the evil begins when the betting begins — 
when fast horses make fast men. As horse- 
racing is now conducted, race-tracks have be- 
come synonyms for all that is degrading in 
modern life. It is time that the organized 
gambling fraternity of the country be opposed 
with an organized opposition — an opposition 
that will expose the bought-and-sold legisla- 
tors who curse the States of New York and 
New J ersey. These pool-rooms are the snares 
for our young men; they are the training- 
schools of forgery and defalcation. Upon the 
brow of every pool-seller I write the unmistak- 
able word "Swindler." Let our cowardly, non- 
committal, professedly Christian voters wake 
up and send a cry to Albany for the repeal of 



108 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



the Ives pool law. It is but self-defense to 
every banker who employs clerks, to every 
employer who intrusts money to other hands, 
to every father who has sons, to every man 
who loves righteousness, to join in the peti- 
tion to our legislature to abolish the measure 
framed in the interest of vice and crime. Let 
the pulpits of New York and New Jersey blaze 
away at this, the greatest agency of vice and 
crime to-day, and let the people rise up and 
overthrow the turf -gambling monster. 



XIX. 



MUNICIPAL KEFOKM A PATKIOTIC DUTY. 

This united effort of all the churches, this 
virtuous outbreak against municipal corrup- 
tion, this earnest endeavor to wipe away foul 
political stains from our fair escutcheon, is 
a grand display of patriotism. This conflict 
between the criminal classes on the one hand 
and the people on the other is a conflict as 
stern, and puts as severe a strain upon patriot- 
ism, as was ever endured upon the battlefield 
amid the glitter of cold steel and the rattle of 
musketry. 

Thanks to the pulpit and the press, the 
rightful creators and conservators of public 
opinion, a flood of daylight has been thrown 
upon our city's government. The evil has 
been brought out. The monster has been 
dragged from his den for all New York to gaze 
at him, and hate him and kill him if they can. 

The part of the ministers in politics is the 
patriotic spirit of the Roman. He was charged 
with violating the laws of his country. Fresh 

109 



110 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



from the fight, covered with the blood of a 
battlefield, where he had led his country's 
armies to victory, he replied, " I have broken 
the laws, but I have saved the State." And 
so the ministers of religion, throwing all the 
laws of spurious delicacy to the winds, will be 
able to say, " We have broken its laws, but we 
have saved the city from the panderers to vice, 
and successfully delivered the rising genera- 
tion, who, all unconscious of their danger, are 
being caught in the mantraps of the city that 
now flourish either through municipal com- 
plicity or municipal stupidity." 

As a rule, all our largest cities are the worst 
governed. Popular government in nearly all 
our cities has degenerated into a government 
by a "boss." Think of thousands of our 
citizens going to the polls led by a "boss"! 
Who is this " boss " whom the ambitious must 
court! Is he a man who earned the confi- 
dence of his fellow-men by the purity of his 
life, his integrity, competency and probity in 
public trusts, his deep study of the problems 
of government? In the light of notorious 
facts these questions sound satirical. 

The city is a menace to our civilization, and 
as our cities grow larger and more dangerous 
the government will become more corrupt and 
control will pass into the hands of those who 



MUNICIPAL REFORM A PATRIOTIC DUTY. Ill 

themselves most need to be controlled. It is 
the patriotic duty of every good citizen to be 
interested in municipal as well as State and 
national politics. No man can abjure politics 
and be either a good citizen or a good Chris- 
tian. 

It was one of the singular regulations of 
Solon, which declared a man dishonored and 
disfranchised who, in civil dispute, took no 
part with either side. 

In the colonial days there were portions of 
New England in which votes were sent to 
householders, and if they did not use them 
they were fined. 

The Greek word idiot is of Greek extraction, 
and meant with the Greeks a man who cared 
nothing for the public interest. Victor Hugo 
said, " Every honest man ought to be a poli- 
tician." Charles Sumner often declared that 
"the citizen who neglects his political duties 
is a public enemy." Edmund Burke said, 
"When bad men combine the good must 
associate, else they will fall one by one an 
unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." 

Every good man in politics wields a power 
for good. Every good man not in politics is 
to blame for political corruption, because by 
neglecting his plain duty he adds to the 
strength of the enemy. It behooves you as 



112 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



Christians to realize that the good of human- 
ity is bound up in the destiny of America, so 
as to carry it continually on your hearts and 
devoutly pray for it. It behooves you to lay 
hold of every privilege, with self-sacrificing 
patriotism to perform every duty of a citizen. 
Do not allow yourself to be driven by any 
party lash into a compromise of your convic- 
tions. Let it be known that with you prin- 
ciple amounts to something, that character 
counts, that transcendent party service can- 
not count upon your suffrage. 

" The lewd fellows of the baser sort " have 
developed political trickery and corruption to 
the highest perfection in our cities, and the 
cities determine our State and national elec- 
tions. Does not this fact contain an ominous 
augury for the future of our Republic ? Un- 
less there is an immediate grand rally of the 
good citizens, that will drive out of our poli- 
tics these imported godless masses, sunk in 
ignorance, lost to the profession of religion, 
and even to the decent habits of civilized 
society, the prophecy that the ocean was dug 
for America's grave, that the winds were 
woven for her winding-sheet, and that the 
mountains were reared for her tombstone, 
will be fulfilled. 

Matters are not so far gone but they may 



MUNICIPAL REFORM A PATBIOTIC DUTY. 113 

be averted. A great French general who 
reached the battlefield at sundown and found 
that the troops of his country had been 
worsted in the fight, accosted the commander. 
Having rapidly learned how matters stood, he 
pulled out his watch, turned his eye on the 
sinking sun, and said, " There's yet time to 
gain the victory." He rallied the broken 
ranks. He placed himself at their head, and 
launching them with the arm of a giant in 
war upon the columns of the foe, snatched 
victory from the jaws of death. There is 
time yet also to save our city. But there is 
no time to lose. There is no time to lose ! 



XX. 



PROTESTANTISM IN NEW YORK CITY. 

In 1800 the Catholic population in the 
United States was 100,000. In 1890 it was 
8,277,039. A fair estimate of the Catholic 
population of New York City is 750,000. A 
third of this number represents the Protest- 
ant church-going population of the city. In 
1840 we had in this city one evangelical Prot- 
estant church to every 2071 of the popula- 
tion; in 1850, one to every 2442; in 1860, 
one to 2777; in 1870, one to 2480; in 1880, 
one to 3048 ; and in 1890, one to 3544, or if 
we take the police census, one to 4006. In 
comparison with the growth of the popula- 
tion, the Presbyterian Church has lost 17 per 
cent, in this city in twenty years. The Meth- 
odist Church in this city in nineteen years 
increased only 26J per cent., and during the 
same time the population increased 80 per 
cent. The Dutch Eeformed Church sustained 
a loss of 10 per cent., relative to the popula- 
tion. There is not a Protestant church in 

114 



PKOTESTANTISM IN NEW YORK CITY. 115 

this city that has grown at all in proportion 
to the growth of the population. 

The Christian forces at work below Four- 
teenth Street are not so large as they were 
twenty years ago, and although during that 
time 200,000 people have moved in below 
Fourteenth Street, twenty churches have 
moved out. One Jewish synagogue and two 
Catholic churches have been added, so that, 
counting churches of every kind, there are 
seventeen less than there were twenty years 
ago. Our pulpits ring with frequent appeals 
for money to establish missions in the des- 
titute West. The population in the city of 
New York exceeds that of North and South 
Dakota, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Ne- 
vada, Colorado, and Wyoming. The Presby- 
terians and Congregationalists have only 85 
pastors at work in this city, while in the 
States mentioned the two denominations have 
540 pastors and workers. 

The greatest mission field in America is in 
New York City, and not in the far regions. 
In the fourth and seventh wards of this city 
there are 70,000 people and seven Protestant 
churches and chapels. In the tenth ward 
there are 47,000 souls and two churches and 
one chapel. The twentieth ward increased 
7f per cent, in population in ten years, and 



116 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



its churches decreased 31 per cent. The drift 
of our Protestant churches is always toward 
the more fashionable parts of the city. The 
magnificent churches built up-town have not 
been built by the people, but the money came 
from the sale of down-town churches, where 
hundreds of thousands of dollars were often 
realized for the ground, and churches left 
behind chapels for the poor on back streets. 
The Protestant church deserves to fail, so 
long as, in defiance of the Christ spirit, it 
builds fine churches for the few and pauper- 
izes the poor by building plain chapels for 
them. God's house should be built for all 
alike. 

" The churches must follow the people " is 
the cry. Who are the people ? The up-town 
rich and fashionables, where the churches all 
seem anxious to crowd and hinder each other's 
growth by ruinous rivalry ? Only a few days 
ago the New York Presbytery advised two 
down-town congregations to dissolve their 
organizations and sell their churches, so that 
the money might be used in removing the 
indebtedness of fashionable up-town churches. 
We have systematically robbed the down-town 
poor by selling their churches to get money 
to build churches for the rich few. 

The Catholic Church never surrenders an 



PKOTESTANTISM IN NEW YORK CITY. 117 

old field ; none of her churches is ever turned 
into secular uses. The people must build their 
own churches. To what, then, is the Catholic 
Church indebted for its triumphant march! 
To the monstrosity of our frequent moving 
days, the indifference of Protestants, and the 
enthusiasm of Catholics. It is because the 
Catholics are thoroughly devoted and in ear- 
nest, and are prepared to make sacrifices and 
to suffer in order to support what they believe 
to be true. 



XXI. 



LET NOT YOUR ANGRY PASSIONS RISE. 

When the storm of passion has cleared away 
the angry man sees that he has been a fool, 
and he has made himself a fool in the eyes of 
others too. Getting " mad " never helps mat- 
ters. No man ever got along better for getting 
angry. To be angry with a weak man proves 
that you are not very strong yourself. " An- 
ger," says Pythagoras, " begins with folly and 
ends with repentance." 

Many men otherwise very good have al- 
lowed a bad temper to get the mastery over 
them so as to make themselves and those 
about them very uncomfortable. A minister 
was dressing himself one day so as to go out 
and make pastoral calls. But when he came 
to fix the collar round his neck he found that 
the button was gone from his shirt and he 
could not fasten the collar. All at once his 
patience left him. He began to storm and 
used unkind words about it, so that his wife 
burst into tears, hastened to her room, sat 
down, and had a good cry. 

118 



LET NOT YOUR ANGRY PASSIONS RISE. 119 

When the minister got through with his 
dressing he went out to make his calls. He 
first called on an old man who was suffering 
greatly from rheumatism and was unable to 
use his limbs. But he found him patient and 
even cheerful. Then he called on a young 
man who was wasting away with consumption 
and expecting soon to die. But he had a hope 
in Christ. He could sing : 

" The world recedes, it disappears, 
Heaven opens on my eyes, my ears 

With sounds seraphic ring. 
Lend, lend your wings, I mount, I fly — 
O grave, where is thy victory ! 

O Death, where is thy sting ! " 

Then he called on an old grandmother, who 
lived all by herself in a miserable old garret. 
As he was going upstairs into her forlorn 
chamber he heard her cheerful voice singing : 

" There is a land of pure delight, 
Where saints immortal reign ; 
Eternal day excludes the night, 
And pleasures "banish pain." 

Lying on her hard pallet, by her side were a 
crust of bread and a cup of cold water, and 
an open Bible with the passage marked: 66 The 
foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have 
nests, tut the son of man has not where to lay 
his head. n And she said, "0 blessed Bible! 



120 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



It is as if a shining angel talked to me ont of 
heaven. My poor chamber seems heaven's 
gate, and I am happy — so happy ! " The last 
call he made was at a home of sorrowing love. 
A young mother sat by the coffin of her first- 
born child. Her cheeks were stained with 
tears. She had been pressing her lips to that 
cold forehead and twining her fingers in that 
silken hair. But to his surprise she was cheer- 
ful. She said, " My Saviour said, t Suffer lit- 
tle children to come unto me, and forbid them 
not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven ! ' 
My babe has gone to heaven ; my lamb is in 
the Shepherd's bosom." 

The minister went home at the close of that 
afternoon feeling very thankful for all that he 
had seen, and deeply impressed with the pre- 
cious comforting of Christ. In the evening he 
was sitting in his easy-chair before the fire, and 
his wife sat near him, busy with her needle. 
In thinking of the visits he had made to those 
different homes of affliction he could not help 
saying, "What a wonderful thing the grace 
of Grod is ! How much it can do ! Nothing 
is too hard for it. Wonderful! wonderful! 
It can do all things." 

" Yes, it is wonderful indeed," said his little 
wife ; " and yet there is one thing which the 
grace of Grod does not seem to have power to do." 



LET NOT YOUR ANGRY PASSIONS RISE. 121 

" And pray what can that be ? " asked her 
husband. 

" Why, it does not seem to have power to 
control a minister's temper when he finds that 
his shirt button is gone." In a moment the 
minister's conscience smote him. He saw what 
a sin he had committed in giving way to an 
angry temper, and how that anger had inter- 
fered with the happiness of his family. With 
his eyes full of tears he said, "Forgive me, 
my dear wife, for the wrong I have done. I 
will ask Grod that I may never give way to 
such an angry temper again." 



XXII. 

IS THEEE A HELL ? 

Is there a hell, or is all that we are told 
about it the creation of superstitious fears? 
If we trace the history of this belief we shall 
find that it has not been entertained by super- 
stitious people alone, but by the wisest and 
best men of every age — heathens as well as 
Jews and Christians — and this fact ought of 
itself shake the unbelief of the most intelli- 
gent skeptic. If the wisest and best men of 
every age, with all their differences of opinion 
upon other points, have unanimously agreed 
in the belief of a future state of retribution, 
this fact claims every man's respectful atten- 
tion, and no man who wishes to have credit 
for good common sense will say that the be- 
lief in a hell is nothing more than a super- 
stition or an invention of priestcraft for mak- 
ing an easy livelihood. The question, Is there 
a hell! resolves itself into this: Is there a 
moral governor of the world? Is there a 
moral law? Is there such a thing as sin? 

122 



IS THERE A HELL ? 



123 



For if there be, then there is such a thing 
as punishment for sin, and that punishment, 
whatever form it may assume, may be desig- 
nated hell. 

But are not all men punished for their sins 
in this life ? We see every day that there is 
not for all sin such a reckoning in this world 
as meets the claims of righteousness and jus- 
tice. There are many whose evil doings pass 
undetected and unpunished, whom neither the 
laws of man nor the laws of nature can reach. 
Thousands of the greatest criminals have gone 
to their graves in peace. Death had no re- 
venging terrors, no retributive remorse for 
them. And when we take a deliberate view 
and see how the righteous often suffer and 
the wicked nourish, we are naturally led to 
exclaim, "Wherefore do the wicked live, be- 
come old; yea, are mighty in power? Is 
there no reward for the righteous? Is there 
no punishment for the workers of iniquity? 
Is there no God that judgeth on the earth?" 
And, indeed, were there no retributions be- 
yond the limits of this present life we should 
be necessarily obliged to admit one or the 
other of the following conclusions : Either 
that no moral governor of the world exists, or 
that justice and judgment are not the habita- 
tion of his throne. 



124 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



How can you have a heaven without a hell ? 
For if there be no hell then all must go to 
heaven. But you can no more have a heaven 
without a hell than you can have a pure and 
clean city, free from nuisance and pestilence, 
without scavengers, sewers and sinks. A pure 
city implies impure commons, where all that 
is unfit to be in the city is cast out. The 
wicked surely cannot be with the saints ; they 
must be together by themselves where the un- 
holy passions that reign in them would soon 
make a hell. If there be no future punish- 
ment, if all go to heaven when they die, then 
a rope will do more for a man and transfer 
him quicker to heaven than a life-long service 
for Christ. Vice is connived at and virtue dis- 
couraged if there be no future retribution. If 
there is no retribution, then we must expect 
to have for our immortal associates drunkards, 
blasphemers and all the base villains that ever 
disgraced humanity. No hell is contradictory 
to conscience and reason. The future punish- 
ment of the impenitent wicked is what our 
common sense demands. 



XXIII. 



THE TENEMENT HOUSE PKOBLEM. 

Much has been said and written of the New 
York tenement houses, their gloom, filth and 
squalor, of the cruel landlordism, and I know 
from personal investigations that the wretch- 
edness in which thousands of our unfortunate 
brothers and sisters live has not been over- 
drawn. The most skilled artist would find his 
pencil lie broken before him if he attempted 
to delineate upon canvas the wretchedness of 
the slums. The most acute conception of the 
reporter's fancy, the most graphic description 
of the orator, the boldest flights of the poet's 
imagination, would be inadequate in execut- 
ing a descriptive scene of the woes of our 
poor and our abominable landlordism. 

These tenements are not only the nurseries 
of seventy-five per cent, of our crime, but they 
are also the abodes of many worthy poor who 
are struggling against their surroundings to 
improve their condition, and give their chil- 
dren a better chance in the race of life than 
they themselves had. 

125. 



126 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



The death-rate in Hester Street is forty per 
cent, higher than the average made by the 
plague in Brazil, and throughout the tenement 
district the deaths usually outnumber the 
births, so that if it were not for the continued 
stream of immigration the tenement house 
problem would soon solve itself. 

The vast majority of our down-town and 
east-side tenements are not fit to be inhabited ; 
the landlords do not pretend to obey the laws 
of health, yet the tenants are paying large 
enough rents to yield landlords and estates 
from ten to twenty per cent. A recent writer 
in The Forum says: "One man boasted that 
he draws thirty-three per cent, on his tene- 
ment investments." Bear lofts and sub-cellars 
rent from $1.50 to $4.00 a week. Talk of evic- 
tions in Ireland, they are nothing compared 
to the evictions and cruel landlordism of our 
slums ! 

The landlord is often an enormously 
wealthy estate which hires an agent, whose 
only business is to show a large balance of 
profits, and the poorer the tenements the 
larger the profits. 0 landlord or estate too 
busy to collect your own rents, it is your duty 
to glorify God in your property as well as in 
your body and soul ; it is for you to know how 
your agent can bring you from fifteen to 



THE TENEMENT HOUSE PEOBLEM. 127 

twenty per cent, profit on your tenement in- 
vestments. The enormous sums that our 
wretched poor pay for the most wretched ac- 
commodations seem so incredible that I hesi- 
tate to present figures. 

Our large moneyed institutions which find 
it difficult to secure safe investments at four 
per cent, should take hold of this tenement 
question. Philanthropists with big bank ac- 
counts should look in this direction as a field 
in which to uplift their fellow-men. There is 
a greater demand for this class of benevolent 
investments in New York than there is for 
added cathedrals, churches, colleges or charity 
organizations. The greatest benefaction that 
could befall this city would be the replacing 
of our tenements by such buildings as the 
Victoria Square in Liverpool. On this square 
once stood miserable tenement houses. To- 
day a magnificent structure stands there, built 
around a hollow square, a large portion of 
which is given up to a playground for the 
children. All arrangements in the house are 
according to the demands of modern science. 
No room is smaller than thirteen by eighteen 
feet and six inches ; the ceilings are nine feet 
high. Three-room tenements rent for $1.44 a 
week, while one-room quarters are let at 54 
cents a week. The total expenditure on the 



128 SANCTIFIED SPICE. 

building was $338,000, and though built as 
a philanthropic enterprise the returns are es- 
timated at four and a half per cent. Who 
among the many millionaires of this city will 
lead off in some such crusade that will give 
to our worthy poor healthier and cleaner 
shelter? 



XXIV. 



THE WAK ON OUK SABBATH. 

This war upon our Sabbath is a foreign 
war. Will you give up the American Sab- 
bath bequeathed to you by your fathers! 
What have you to say to the transatlantic 
comers who propose to Europeanize America ! 
Are you cowardly enough to sit in sackcloth 
and ashes before the enemies of God while 
they impudently strike at our most sacred 
institution! Will you not defend it as long 
as there is any strength in your arm or blood 
in your heart ! 

" Woodman, spare that tree ! 
Touch not a single bough ! 
In youth it sheltered me, 
And I'll protect it now." 

If foreigners will not assimilate with us as 
American citizens, if they do not admire our 
Sabbath and Christian institutions, if they 
want social incendiarism and sabbatic dis- 
order, a go-as-you-please Sabbath, they are 
welcome to enjoy it — by recrossing the At- 

129 



130 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



lantic — the sooner the better, and that, too, 
with our warmest benedictions ! But if they 
stay here, we demand the enforcement of that 
central truth of statecraft — the liberty of the 
individual subject to the sovereignty of the 
State — the subordination of individual rights 
and privileges to the general good ; these are 
integral elements in a stable national life. 
Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty on Bedloe's 
Island, opposite Castle G-arden, holding in 
her right hand a torch, should hold in her 
left hand a volume containing the laws and 
customs of the land, and before the right hand 
be extended in welcome, require upon bended 
knee the left hand to be kissed as a token of 
submission to our laws, customs and institu- 
tions. 

This secularization of the Sabbath is a plain 
violation of the statutes of our State. Every 
Sabbath-breaker is a criminal, and he who 
attempts to override the laws of the State 
insults every American citizen. 

It is a war upon our political institutions. 
In countries where the Sabbath is most pro- 
faned, like Spain, France, Italy and Bavaria, 
society is grossly immoral. In Sabbath-ob- 
serving England, Scotland and America, 
society is found in its highest moral tone. 
Pick out the hamlets or cities, or wards of 



THE WAR ON OUR SABBATH. 131 

cities, where are the lowest moral conditions, 
and there jnst in proportion is the Sabbath 
desecrated. An eminent judge of the United 
States Supreme Court forcibly said : " Where 
there is no Christian Sabbath there is no 
Christian morality; and without this free 
government cannot be maintained." Black- 
stone says: "The Sabbath is of admirable 
service to the State, considered merely as a 
civil institution." 

History's lesson is that morality and Sab- 
bath-keeping walk hand in hand in insepara- 
ble affinity. Society is degraded as Christian- 
ity is corrupted ; and Christianity is vitiated 
as the Sabbath is perverted. History most 
clearly proves that every nation and commu- 
nity has been prospered while it honored God's 
Sabbath, and that social order and the su- 
premacy of the law have not been maintained 
where the Sabbath has been trampled on. 
Look abroad over the map of popular freedom 
in the world — Switzerland, Scotland, England 
and the United States, the countries which 
best observe the Sabbath, constitute almost 
the entire map of safe popular government. 

Some years ago, De Tocqueville, the dis- 
tinguished French statesman, was commis- 
sioned by his country for the purpose of 
studying the genius of our institutions. In 



132 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



reporting to the French Senate, he said : "I 
went at yonr bidding, and passed along their 
thoroughfares of trade. I ascended their 
mountains, and went down their valleys. I 
visited their manufactories, their commercial 
markets and emporiums of trade. I entered 
their judicial courts and legislative halls. But 
I sought everywhere in vain for the secret of 
their success, until I entered the church. It 
was there, as I listened to the soul-equalizing 
and soul-elevating principles of the Grospel of 
Christ, as they fell from Sabbath to Sabbath 
upon the masses of the people, that I learned 
why America was great and free, and why 
France was a slave." 

In the dark days of the French Eevolution, 
"the shabbiest page of human annals," as 
Carlyle calls it, the Sabbath was trampled 
in the dust, and a tenth day of rest substi- 
tuted without divine sanction ; and so fright- 
ful did society become that the infidel author- 
ities had to institute the holy Sabbath and 
public worship to save the metropolis and 
the country from utter desolation. France is 
yet reaping the sad fruitage of her folly, and 
she will never have a permanent republic until 
she quits her roaring, roystering and rollick- 
ing Sabbaths and devotes one day in every 
week to the recognition of Grod, 



THE WAR ON OUE SABBATH. 133 

I believe that the security or disaster of 
American institutions depends upon the issue 
of the Sabbath contest. The end of the Sab- 
bath would be for the United States the 
beginning of the reign of Mammon, Bacchus 
and Yenus, and finally overwhelm us in tem- 
poral and eternal ruin. From such a fate 
may the Grod of Lexington and Gettysburg 
deliver us ! 

The Sabbath question is a question of life 
and death in regard to Christianity. The 
enemies of religion tried the sword and the 
fagot. They could not destroy the Grospel. 
Imperial power found its arm too weak to 
contend with Grod. Argument, ridicule and 
sophistry were all in vain. Christianity rose 
with augmented power and more resplendent 
beauty. The last weapon the enemy seeks to 
employ to destroy Christianity is to corrupt 
the Sabbath and make it a day of festivity. 
Voltaire truly said: " There is no hope of 
destroying Christianity so long as the Sab- 
bath is kept as a sacred day." Dr. Philip 
SchatT says: "The Sabbath is the strongest 
bond that binds the different Protestant de- 
nominations." I congratulate our city that 
notwithstanding the complex character of our 
population we have escaped the invasion so 
well. But I call upon all Christian citizens 



134 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



and lovers of political freedom to stand unan- 
imously and irresistibly in this Thermopylae 
of our American history. Declare before high 
heaven that you will not give up the Sabbath, 
and that you will bring ignominious defeat to 
the enemies of God and the public weal ! 



XXV. 



SELF-AS SEKTION. 

The greatest waste of life is wasted or per- 
verted power. How few men make their lives 
noble ! They sink into the grave with scarcely 
a trace to indicate that they ever lived. They 
lived and they died. Cradle and grave are 
closely brought together; there is nothing 
between them. There have been hundreds 
who could have rivaled the patriotism of a 
Washington, or the humanity of a Howard, 
or the eloquence of a Demosthenes, and who 
have left behind them no one memorial of 
their existence, because of lack of lofty cour- 
age, sublime moral heroism, the assertion of 
individuality. The world's great things have 
been accomplished by individuals. Vast social 
reformations have originated in individual 
souls. Truths that now sway the world were 
first proclaimed by individual lips. Great 
thoughts that are now the axioms of human- 
ity proceeded from the center of individual 
hearts. Let not others fashion what your life 

135 



136 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



shall be. Thomas Carlyle says that he would 
like to stop the stream of people in the Strand 
and ask every man his history. "But no," 
says the sage, " I will not stop them. If I did 
I should find they were like a flock of sheep 
following in the track of one another." 

Alas ! men begin to lose their individuality 
of conviction the moment they begin life's 
business. Many a young man has sacrificed 
his individuality on the altar that a profli- 
gate companion built for him. Many a young 
man who knew right has allowed some empty- 
headed street-corner loafer to lower his own 
high moral tone lest he should seem singular 
in the little world of society surrounding him. 

Thousands become bad, not because they 
intended to be bad, but because they had not 
the courage to resolve to do good. 

The worst weakness in the world is to fear 
to do right because others will criticise it. 
Dare to be singular ! Dare to stand alone and 
unflinchingly for the right, though the earth 
reels and the heavens fall ! 

I don't disparage associations. Exaggerated 
individuality makes a man impracticable. But 
the danger of our times is to shape ourselves 
by others, so as to destroy force and effective- 
ness, to think in cliques. 

Live, then, like an individual. Take life 



SELF-ASSERTION. 



137 



like a man — as though the world had waited 
for your coming. Don't take your cue from 
other men — the weak, the prejudiced, the trim- 
mers, the cowards — but rather from the illus- 
trious ones of earth. Dare to take the side 
that seems wrong to man's blinded eye. Scorn 
the praise of men. Learn to live with G-od, 
and you will pass from manhood to immortal- 
ity with the seal of God upon your brow. 



XXVI. 



GAMBLEKS AND GAMBLING. 

I solemnly warn you against gambling, 
because : 

1. It is illegal. No man ever gambles but 
is a criminal to the law of Grod and to the law 
of the land. 

2. It is dishonest. It is taking that to 
which you have no claim. Hazard is no title ; 
winning is no ownership. Only fair exchange 
is no robbery. 

3. It is destructive. Gramblers are seldom 
industrious men in any useful vocation. Labor 
loses its relish as the passion for play increases. 
It destroys all domestic habits and affections. 
The gambler may for a moment sport with his 
children and smile upon his wife, but his heart 
is not at home. "A little branch rill may flow 
through the family, but the deep well of his 
affections flows away from home." It destroys 
all that is good in the soul, vitiates the whole 
character, and drags down every lofty purpose 
and noble inspiration. Once in the fatal snare, 

138 



GAMBLEKS AND GAMBLING. 139 



the gambler is seldom saved. Friends may 
warn, the wife entreat with the eloquence of 
her tears, and children cry for bread, but deaf 
as the adder, desperate as the maniac, he rushes 
on, regardless of danger, reckless of conse- 
quences. 

4. It is a poor business. All the odds are 
against you. You have ten chances to be 
struck with lightning to one for winning. Men 
go in for wool and come out shorn. Every 
gambler sooner or later goes to the dogs. 

5. It is an unhappy business. The gloomiest 
set of men in the world are your betting men. 
They are always on the edge of a precipice. 
They are in perpetual danger of being reduced 
to beggary. 

6. It ruins at last. You may gain all that 
the tables of earth can bear, but it may be the 
price of a lost soul. The devil, the arch-gam- 
bler, is cunningly playing for your soul. Life 
is a mighty game, in which you are the stake. 
Who shall be the winner — Grod or the devil 1 



XXVII. 



WANTED — HONEST MEN. 

I am not one of those who believe that 
" every man has his price," and that " an hon- 
est man has a lock of hair growing in the palm 
of his right hand." No ! There are in the 
world of business many more honest men than 
rogues, and for one trust betrayed there are 
thousands most sacredly kept. I have no 
sympathy with the cynic who, as history in- 
forms us, being ordered to summon the good 
men of the city before the Eoman censor, 
proceeded immediately to the graveyard, and, 
standing on a grave, called to the dead below, 
saying he knew not where to find a good man 
alive ; or that sour sage, that prince of gam- 
blers, who could speak in praise of no one but 
himself and his wife (the latter deserving all 
the praise she got for enduring him so long), 
I refer to Thomas Carlyle, who described the 
population of his country as consisting of so 
many millions, " mostly fools." When any one 
complains, as Diogenes did, that he has to 

140 



WANTED HONEST MEN. 



141 



hunt the streets with candles at noonday to 
find an honest man, we are apt to think that 
his nearest neighbor would have quite as much 
difficulty in making such a discovery. If you 
think there is not a true man living you had 
better, for appearance's sake, not say so until 
you are dead yourself. 

But some of the most gigantic scoundrels 
have fattened on sermons about love, faith, 
inspiration, the efficacy of the sacraments, and 
heaven, who ought by practical preaching to 
have been thundered out of the church, where 
their presence was a sacrilege and a disgrace. 
Mr. Froude, the distinguished English historian 
and essayist, said that he had heard hundreds 
of sermons on the non-essentials, " but never, 
during these thirty wonderful years, never one, 
that I can recollect, on common honesty, or 
those primitive commandments — thou shalt 
not lie ; thou shalt not steal." 

The bankrupt laws of our land have reduced 
stealing to a fine art. Our laws are making 
people dishonest by fixing it so that a man can 
wipe out his debts by compromising with his 
creditors. 

" The world is a goose, to succeed you must pick 
The feathers off nicely by buying on tick ; 
The vulgar pickpocket is sent off to jail ; 
Be polite ; give your note, and gracefully fail." 



142 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



Strange, but true, a man will be treated 
kindly in proportion to the severity of his fall. 
Smash on a small scale, and the world will 
jump on you with both feet; smash on a 
grand scale, and the world will take you by 
the hand. What the world needs more than 
anything else right now is downright honesty, 
and the church will never convert the world 
until she gets honest. She has too many 
members who are agents for and boarders with 
their wives. A man's church-membership has 
not the commercial value of one dollar. There 
are thousands of men in our churches who do 
not tell the truth. I was reading the other 
day of an old Hard-Shell Baptist down in 
Georgia who walked into a store one day and 
said to the merchant, "I want a couple of 
hundred dollars' worth of goods this year on 
credit." The merchant looked at his old hat 
and jean pants, and concluded that he was 
not the sort of man to trust, and he told him 
he would not give him the goods. The man 
walked out, and the merchant asked the clerk 
in the store, "Who is that man?" "That's 
Mr. So-and-so, and he belongs to the Hard- 
Shell church up here." The merchant went 
out after him and said, "Friend, come back 
here. Are you a Hard-Shell?" He said, 
" Yes." " Well," said the merchant, " you can 



WANTED — HONEST MEN. 



143 



have all you want; you can have all here in 
this store on credit for as long time as you 
need." And down in Georgia the Hard- Shells 
will turn defaulters out of church just as 
quickly as they will drunkards. I hope to see 
the day when you may sell the last thing a 
man has who can but won't pay his honest 
debts. How can you keep the things that the 
people ought to have \ If all our church mem- 
bers would pay their debts the world would 
have more confidence in the church and in 
Christianity. 

As a mere matter of selfishness, "honesty 
is the best policy." But he who is honest for 
policy's sake is already a moral bankrupt. 
Men of policy are conscientiously ( ! ) honest 
when they think honesty will pay the better, 
but when policy will pay better they give hon- 
esty the slip. Honesty and policy have noth- 
ing in common. When policy is in, honesty 
is out. It is more honorable for some men 
to fail than for others to succeed. Rather 
be like Longfellow's honest blacksmith, " who 
looked the whole world in the face and 
feared not any man," than enrich yourself at 
the sacrifice of conscience and the blessing of 
Heaven. 

Part with anything rather than your integ- 
rity and conscious rectitude. Capital is not 



144 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



what a man has, but what a man is. Charac- 
ter is capital. 

" Take thou no thought for aught save truth and right, 
Content if such thy fate to die obscure ; 
Wealth palls, and honors, fame may not endure, 
And loftier souls soon weary of delight. 

" Keep innocence, be all a true man ought, 

Let neither pleasures tempt nor pain appall ; 
Who hath this, he hath all things, having naught ; 
Who hath it not, hath nothing, having all." 



XXVIII. 



THE SWEETEST KEVENGE. 

Bykon in " Don Juan " says, " Sweet is re- 
venge." But we rather agree with Milton : 

" Eevenge at first though, sweet, 
Bitter ere long, back on itself recoils." 

Juvenal says, " Revenge is only the pleasure 
of a little, weak and narrow mind." Lord 
Karnes truly says, " The indulgence of revenge 
tends to make men more savage and cruel." 
The dog believes that revenge is sweet, and 
with almost human tenacity cherishes ideas 
of revenge. The length of time a dog will 
treasure up the remembrance of an injury is 
truly marvelous. " He forgets neither friend 
nor foe," says Sir Walter Scott, " remembers, 
and with accuracy, both benefit and injury." 
In his delightful "Anecdotes of Dogs," Jesse 
furnishes some noteworthy instances of this 
strength of canine memory. On one occasion, 
according to his story, a traveler, in passing 

145 



146 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



on horseback through a small Cumberland 
village, out of pure thoughtlessness struck 
with his whip at a large Newfoundland dog 
that reposed by the wayside. The enraged 
animal rushed at him and pursued him for a 
considerable distance. One year later his busi- 
ness took him to the same village, and as he 
was leading his horse, the dog, recollecting 
him, seized his leg, the teeth penetrating 
through the boot, and the animal might have 
done him serious injury had not assistance 
been procured. Eevenge is not manhood, it is 
rather dogliood. The manlier any man is, the 
milder and more merciful will he be ; as Julius 
Caesar, who, when he had Pompey's head pre- 
sented to him, wept and said, " I seek not re- 
venge, but victory." 

When you are tempted to give the cutting 
word, or hasty answer, check yourself with 
the question: Is this the reply my Saviour 
would have given 1 If your fellow-men should 
prove unkind, inconsiderate and ungrateful, 
be it yours to refer the cause to God. Revenge! 
No such word should have a place in the Chris- 
tian's vocabulary. Revenge ! If I cherish such 
a feeling toward my brother, how can I meet 
that brother in heaven? Christ did not an- 
swer cutting taunts and unmerited wrong. 
" Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again." 



THE SWEETEST REVENGE. 147 



" Let this mind be in yon which was also in 
Christ Jesus." " Overcome evil with good." 

Don't be irritable, huff: y, sensitive. Don't lose 
yonr temper. Don't lose it, did I say? Lose 
it, by all means. If a man is as jealons, pas- 
sionate, huffy, sullen, sour, moody, mrffy and 
revengeful after his conversion as he was be- 
fore it, what is he converted from or to ? We 
live only by the forbearance of Grod. We are 
to repeat in our lives to others at least some- 
thing of His patience towards us. We are 
taught to pray every day: "Forgive us our 
debts, as tve forgive our debtors." If we are 
exacting and revengeful, if we cannot forgive 
the unkind treatment of others, how can we 
sincerely pray this petition? The sweetest 
revenge is to forgive and forget. 

" Let by-gones be by-gones ; if by-gones were clouded 
By aught that occasioned a pang of regret, 
Oh, let them in darkest oblivion be shrouded, 
'Tis wise and 'tis kind to forgive and forget. 

" Let by-gones be by-gones and good be extracted 
From ill over which it is folly to fret ; 
The wisest of mortals have foolishly acted — 
The kindest are those who forgive and forget. 

" Let by-gones be by-gones ; oh, cherish no longer 
The thought that the sun of affection has set ; 
Eclipsed for a moment its rays will be stronger 
If you, like a Christian, forgive and forget. 



148 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



" Let by-gones be by-gones ; your heart will be lighter 
When kindness of yours with reception has met. 
The flame of your heart will be purer and brighter 
If God-like, you strive to forgive and forget. 

" Let by-gones be by-gones ; oh, purge out the leaven 
Of malice, and try an example to set 
To others, who, craving the mercy of Heaven 
Are sadly too slow to forgive and forget. 

" Let by-gones be by-gones ; remember how deeply 
To Heaven's forbearance we all are in debt ! 
They value God's infinite goodness too cheaply 
Who heed not the precept ' Forgive and forget.' " 



XXIX. 



FUNERAL REFORM. 

Theee has recently been formed in this city 
a " Bnrial Reform Association/' the principal 
aims of which are to secure simple funeral 
services, to promote inexpensive funerals, to 
discourage excessive display of flowers, the 
wearing of crape, especially of crape veils, 
which if worn over the head not only disguise 
the wearer, but put the eyes to a severe strain 
to look through its black meshes, and if worn 
thrown back pull so upon the hair that it is 
not uncommon for the wearer to suffer se- 
verely. 

Dark colors, even black, may be appropri- 
ately worn, but crape calls attention to the 
person in mourning, and you can almost de- 
tect for whom the mourning is, and often the 
length of time it has been going on — all of 
which is a satire on real grief, which mourns 
in secret. 

Paul's glad victory over death and the grave 
is muffled by the raven feathers of funereal 
plumes. The waving crape upon the door- 

149 



150 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



knob; the darkened windows; the body 
shrouded and coffined in the color of gloom ; 
women and children veiled and draped in dis- 
piriting black ; men's hats banded with crape 
— what hopelessness all these things express ! 
They symbolize doubt, despair, agony and 
gloom. They express no Christian comfort, 
breathe no heavenly consolation, suggest no 
immortal hope, inspire no sure confidence. 
I have seen the ultra-fashionable cover their 
pet dogs with crape, and crape-mounted horses, 
coachmen and footmen are used to further em- 
phasize these negations of Christian truth. 

"We have "full mourning," "mourning jew- 
elry," "mourning visiting-cards," "mourning 
stationery," which by its gradual narrowing 
indicates that the days of mourning are ap- 
proaching their end ; but the ghastly humor 
of our mourning customs reaches its climax 
in "second mourning," followed by the full 
bloom of gorgeous colors, for the time ap- 
pointed by the inexorable decree of fashion- 
able society has passed, and now mourning 
may be laid aside with funereal garments. 

If you depreciate these practices, when death 
occurs in your family have the courage to do 
away with what good sense declares objection- 
able features. Dare to defy silly social customs. 

Take the matter of flowers. In many house- 
holds there is a display offensive to refined 



FUNERAL REFORM. 



151 



taste, and among the poor the display is fre- 
quently sinful in its profusion ; they put their 
last dollar into flowers. Funerals are nowa- 
days so expensive that it costs more to die 
than to live. I have known men who died 
solvent but became insolvent before they got 
under the ground. Our undertakers are fre- 
quently swindled. It is not only false rever- 
ence and mistaken affection, but downright 
dishonesty, if a man's family or friends in- 
dulge expenditures that cannot be met. 

Take the matter of funeral addresses. Gen- 
erally the less good a man has done the more 
good the preacher is expected to say of him, 
and the preachers often discharge their duty 
in this particular in such a way as to bring 
their profession into ridicule. 

To hold the funerals of haters of churches 
in the church is trying to do for their bodies 
what they would never do for their souls. It 
seems like taking a mean advantage of a man 
after he is dead, to take him by force where 
he could not be persuaded to go when he was 
alive. The most sacred place in which to hold 
the funeral service is the quiet home. 

Sunday funerals are rarely necessary ; they 
nearly always assume a magnitude that 
amounts to Sabbath desecration. The Lord's 
day is for rest and divine worship, and not 
for great funeral pageants. 



XXX. 



DANCING. 

Dancing in proper forms is healthy ; it im- 
proves the bearing of our youth, tends to re- 
lieve their natural awkwardness in society, and 
is innocent. An amiable clergyman happened 
to be present one evening when some young 
ladies went through a quadrille. He looked 
on with great pleasure. The next morning he 
was called to account by some of his busy 
neighbors for having, by his presence, counte- 
nanced dancing. He emphatically denied the 
charge, and asserted that no dancing had taken 
place, but only, as he expressed it, "a most 
beautiful exercise." If stepping to music is 
innocent, I cannot see how skipping to music 
can be converted into sin. For one I am glad 
that nearly all the Christian families of the 
highest standing in all of our churches have 
asserted their right to act out their own con- 
victions in this matter, and have shown that 
this much berated amusement can be elevated 
and refined. I am not a preacher of gloom, 

152 



DANCING. 



153 



but of moderation. Harmless things may be- 
come sinful by excess. 

Dancing frequently leads to the sacrifice of 
health. The physical education of women is 
at the best too much disregarded in this coun- 
try. Woman's dress is arranged with regard 
to looks rather than health. How small is the 
number of healthy women in the higher classes 
of society! How pale and languid are the 
young women when winter is over ! Many of 
them look as if they had just recovered from 
a long illness. The objections I have to the 
dance are found in the excessive exercise in 
a heated and overcrowded room, in the late 
hours, insufficient apparel, in extravagance 
and gormandish indulgence at the supper-ta- 
ble. Remove or moderate these things, bring 
this amusement within the bounds of reason, 
and no sensible man will find fault. Instead 
of imitating the foolish customs of European 
society, let good sense— for the sake of novel- 
ty, if for nothing else — become fashionable. 
The dance takes too great a place and occupies 
too much time in modern society ; it effectual- 
ly stops intellectual improvement, and crowds 
out intelligent conversation. Conversation is 
one of the lost arts. Good talkers are almost 
extinct creatures. Many people's talk is mere- 
ly an exercise of the tongue. No other human 



154 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



faculty has any share in it. Many men and 
women are educated failures. It is not enough 
for women to sit stiff and look wise through 
double-extra eyeglasses. They are oppressive. 
If at an evening party you should retire to a 
corner of the room and note the talk of the 
company and produce a verbatim report of the 
conversation, each speaker would feel lament- 
ably chagrined at the superficial and trifling 
character of his or her utterances. It is a com- 
mon saying, that it is not half so bad to dance 
at an evening party as it is to be in another 
room and slander your neighbors. The mem- 
bers of my church are not obliged to do either. 
Avoid personalities in your conversation. Talk 
about things instead of conversing about peo- 
ple. People who read and think converse about 
ideas and things. Of the virtuous woman Sol- 
omon says: "She openeth her mouth with 
wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kind- 
ness." 

" Nay, speak no ill ; a kindly word 
Can never leave a sting behind ; 
And oh, to breathe each tale we've heard 
Is far beneath a noble mind." 



XXXI. 



THE DEADLY CIGAKETTE. 

All the medical fraternities of the United 
States and Great Britain, allopathic, homoeo- 
pathic, hydropathic, eclectic and electric, con- 
demn cigarette smoking as one of the most 
destructive evils that ever befell the youth of 
any country, declaring that its direct tendency 
is a deterioration of the race. The cigarette 
is overshadowing every other branch of the 
tobacco business. It is estimated that seven 
hundred millions of cigarettes are manufact- 
ured annually in our country. Investigation 
has shown that cigarettes, as a rule, are adul- 
terated, and more injurious than tobacco. A 
physician had a cigarette analyzed, and found 
the tobacco to be strongly impregnated with 
opium, while the wrapper, warranted to be rice- 
paper, proved to be common paper whitened 
with arsenic. An eminent physician pro- 
nounces cigarettes to be worse for boys than 
cigars, because the paper absorbs more of the 
nicotine. Nicotine is one of the subtlest of 
poisons. Brodie, Queen Victoria's physician, 

155 



156 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



made several experiments with nicotine, apply- 
ing it to the tongues of a mouse, a squirrel and 
a dog. Death was produced in every instance. 
Hold white paper over the smoke of a cigar- 
ette, scrape the condensed smoke from the 
paper, and put a small quantity on the tongue 
of a cat, and in spite of its " nine lives " it will 
instantly writhe in convulsions and die. Dr. 
Hammond gives it as his testimony that " no 
speedier method for rendering existence pain- 
ful is more efficacious than to smoke cigarettes 
and to inhale the fumes into the lungs. By 
this practice a very large absorbing surface is 
exposed to the action of the nicotine and other 
poisonous products which are evolved when 
tobacco is burned. As a consequence the sys- 
tem is more thoroughly subjected to their in- 
fluence and disease more certainly produced. 
The action of the brain is impaired thereby, 
the ability to think, and in fact all mental 
concentration are weakened. Neuralgia, espe- 
cially about the face, throat diseases, nasal 
catarrh, serious affections of the eyes, dyspep- 
sia, and, above all, interruption in the normal 
action of the heart, are among the conse- 
quences resulting from the inhalation of cigar- 
ette smoke." 

A distinguished French physician has inves- 
tigated the effect of smoking on thirty-eight 



THE DEADLY CIGARETTE. 



157 



boys, between the ages of nine and fifteen, who 
were addicted to the habit. Twenty-seven 
presented distinct symptoms of nicotine poi- 
son. In 22 there were serious disorders of the 
circulation, indigestion, dullness of intellect, 
and a marked appetite for strong drink. In 3 
there was heart affection, in 8 decided deterio- 
ration of blood. In 12 there was frequent 
bleeding of the nose ; 10 had disturbed sleep, 
and 4 had ulceration of the mouth. 

Tobacco attacks the nervous system and 
thereby impairs the mental faculties. Dr. 
Willard Parker says : " Tobacco is ruinous 
in our schools, dwarfing the body and mind." 
At an examination for admission to the Free 
College of New York, out of 900 girls, 660, or 
71 per cent., passed, while only 48 per cent, 
of the boys could enter, the difference being 
ascribed to the stupefying effects of tobacco. 
The effect of tobacco on schoolboys is so 
marked as not to be open for discussion. The 
classes of Yale are graded according to their 
scholarship. In the first division only 25 per 
cent, use tobacco ; in the second, 48 ; in the 
third, 70 ; and in the lowest, 85. During the 
last fifty years no devotee of the weed has 
graduated from Harvard at the head of his 
class, although above 83 per cent, of the stu- 
dents are addicted to its use. 



158 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



There are in this city a good many " cigar- 
butt grubbers," as they are termed; that is, 
boys and girls who scour the streets for stumps 
and half-burnt cigars, which are dried and 
then sold to be used in making cigarettes. A 
ragged eight-year-old Italian boy, bareheaded 
and barefooted, was brought before one of the 
city justices on the charge of vagrancy. The 
officer who arrested him stated that he found 
the boy picking up cigar stumps from the 
streets and gutters, showing the justice a bas- 
ket half -full of such stumps, water-soaked, and 
covered with mud. "What do you do with 
these ¥ " asked his Honor. " I sell them to a 
man for ten cents a pound, and they are used 
for making cigarettes." A Southern tobacco- 
nist stated to a New York Tribune representa- 
tive that the extent to which drugs are used 
in cigarettes is appalling, and that "Havana 
flavoring " is sold by the thousand barrels, pre- 
pared from the tonka-bean, which contains a 
deadly poison. Cigar wrappers in many cases 
are made from the filthy scrapings of rag-pick- 
ers, arsenic being often used in the bleaching 
process, while combustion develops the oil of 
creosote. 

Boys, would you have your bodily powers 
developed; would you be strong, vigorous- 
minded men ? Don't smoke ! On our streets 



THE DEADLY CIGAKETTE. 



159 



we behold a vast and ever-increasing number 
of boys who evidently consider smoking essen- 
tial to manliness. And our police have orders 
to stop all boys under sixteen ! Parents are 
surprisingly ignorant of the habits of their 
boys in this regard, and when not ignorant, 
surprisingly timid and criminally indifferent. 
Would to God that all fathers were models to 
their boys. 

Boys, break away now, before you are bound 
hand and foot to a pitiable thralldom. Think 
of a man mastered by a cigarette ! 



\ 



XXXII. 

THE BKIDAL SCENE AT CANA. 

This wedding, made forever the most mem- 
orable one in history by the presence and grace 
of Christ, was celebrated in the lovely little 
town of Cana, three miles northeast of Naza- 
reth, " lying in the lap of the Galilean hills like 
a bird in its nest." 

There is something significant in the fact 
that the Saviour began his miracles at a wed- 
ding rather than at a funeral — the grave of 
Lazarus, or the gate of Nain. It was a prac- 
tical reproof of the asceticism that scorns the 
happiness of social and domestic affections, 
and that would make of life a ghostly auster- 
ity, just as if men were heavenly because they 
were unearthly. 

No personal act more deeply involves happi- 
ness than marriage. Yet the general conversa- 
tion on this ordinance is lamentably below the 
high standard God has given to it. Marriage 
is the perfected life of love between two kin- 
dred spirits ; and yet how often it is merely 
a society affair between two exquisite fools ; 

160 



THE BBIDAL SCENE AT CAN A. 



161 



matrimony is made a matter -of -money, and how 
often the lips ntter vows of love which the 
heart can never ratify. A marriage for any- 
thing but love is a humiliating stoop to the 
dust, a mockery that blushes to the skies. 
Love is founded upon esteem, and is therefore 
under the control of reason. 

Marry " only in the Lord." " For how can 
two walk together except they be agreed ? " If 
there is one place at which husband and wife 
should meet in the completest harmony, it is 
at the cross of Christ. 

" Together should their prayers ascend, 
Together should they humbly bend 
To praise the Almighty name." 

Those who are one in Christ fight double- 
handed against evil. The child of Glod will 
bring a blessing to your house above earthly 
riches. 

Make Christ one of your wedding-guests. 
Never should the duty with the prayer, " Com- 
mit thy way unto him, and he will direct thy 
paths," be more intensely realized than at the 
marriage altar. With your selected and future 
companion say to him, " If thy presence go not 
with us, carry us not up hence." If earnestly 
solicited by you, Christ will now, as of old, 
by his presence beautify and bless your bridal 



162 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



hour, sanctify your joy, and leave his bene- 
diction upon your hearts to perpetuate your 
love, and f ulfill all the happy prophecies of the 
bridal day. Without the presence of Christ 
to bless the marriage, the congratulations and 
good wishes of friends will be only empty 
words, the flowers will wither and the music 
grow discordant. 

Having entered upon your new home, get 
down upon your knees together, and ask Christ 
to consecrate it. The faith of heart in heart 
will die without faith in Christ. Love puri- 
fied by religion is the fragrant blossom that 
will gladden the heart and beautify the hum- 
blest home. 

" Home's not merely four square walls, 
Though with pictures hung and gilded ; 
Home is where affection calls, 

Filled with shrines the heart hath builded." 

This sanctified love instantly recalls the 
hasty word ; it stands upon no dignity as to 
whose place it is to yield first to the other; 
it lets not the sun go down upon an angry 
thought or feeling between two hearts that 
have been made one. It transforms blemishes 
into imaginary virtues. As Shakespeare has 
it— 

" My love doth so approve him, 
That e'en his stubbornness, his cheeks and frowns, 
Have grace and favor in them." 



THE BRIDAL SCENE AT CANA. 163 

To make a home you must strengthen the 
bonds of affection. The Gospel of Christ hal- 
lows the affections and sweetens the temper. 
Come, then, often to the throne of grace, and 
by prayer enliven your religious sensibilities, 
which is the very soul of conjugal love and 
the maturer of those graces that belong to 
wedlock's string of pearls. 

How fitting it was that He who came to re- 
store the Lost Paradise to man should give 
this significant approval of this sacred bond, 
and make the Christian home the mightiest 
instrument in the work of regenerating the 
human race. The Christian home is the mas- 
ter of life's busy school, the brightest radiance 
that cheers the darkness of man's earthly con- 
dition ; it is the guiding star of his good des- 
tiny ; and the richest earthly prize a man can 
win is a wife from the Lord. 

Christ never meant that home was to be 
merely a refectory and dormitory, but a place 
to live. If you would not have your children 
lost to you in after-life, make home happy to 
them when they are young. Let it be the 
place of sparkling joy and innocent amuse- 
ment, and thus counteract the fashionable 
tendency of our time to abandon the home 
and seek pleasure abroad. The reason that so 
many children make every effort possible to 



164 SANCTIFIED SPICE. 

get away from home at night is lack of enter- 
tainment at home. Don't reserve all your so- 
cial charms for friends and strangers abroad, 
and keep dullness for home consumption. 

What might we not hope for this world if 
we could fill it with happy Christian homes, 
supported by true men, and presided over by 
loving women, where every one, young and 
old, conspired to adorn the home with all the 
light the mind can yield, and all the love the 
heart can furnish ! 

"Was Jesus invited to your wedding ? Were 
the nuptial vows sanctified by His presence ? 
Make Him, then, your abiding Gruest. Then 
you will grow in mutual affinity and spiritual 
assimilation, realizing a happiness in the sacred 
union which you never dreamed of in your 
youthful love. Your last days of marriage 
will be happier than the first, because you 
lived for each other, and He who was present 
and sanctified your marriage vows will crown 
your union with the love that never chills, and 
keeps on growing until it leaps over the grave 
and you are caught up to share the unending 
fellowship of the marriage supper of the Lamb 
in heaven. 



XXXIII. 



NO FOKEIGN FLAGS ON CITY HALL. 

I am decidedly opposed to the display of any 
other flag on our State and municipal build- 
ings than the Stars and Stripes. Imagine 
Americans in London, Dublin or Eome de- 
manding the display of our flag on the public 
buildings in those cities on the Fourth of July ! 
When the foreigner becomes an American citi- 
zen it is his duty to celebrate our own national 
holidays. It is perfectly natural to have sym- 
pathy for one's native country, and foreigners 
may with propriety privately celebrate any 
event that may have been a blessing to the 
land of their birth, but they have no right to 
expect the municipal or federal authorities to 
review their parades or float from the public 
buildings any other flag than our own flag. 

It is deeply to be regretted that many natu- 
ralized citizens do not Americanize. On the con- 
trary, they propose to Europeanize America. 
There is no such thing as " Irish- Americans," 
" German- Americans" or " Italian- Americans," 
any more than there are French-Irishmen, Ital- 

165 



166 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



ian-Englishmen or Grerman-Frenclinien. We 
must all be Americans. One flag, one country. 
There should be no such thing as the " Irish 
vote," the " German vote " or " Italian vote," 
for which rascally demagogues of both parties 
bid, but only the American vote. 

All over our country colonists buy land and 
build up States within a State. In the West 
I saw little Grermanies here, little Scandina- 
vias there and little Irelands yonder. Certain 
quarters of our city in language, customs and 
costumes are essentially foreign. If this in- 
sweeping immigration into our land is not 
Americanized it will foreignize us. Among 
native Americans there is an alarming ten- 
dency to depreciate American life. Many 
Americans look across the ocean for their ex- 
ample. 

I cheerfully admit that thousands upon 
thousands of our naturalized citizens are use- 
ful and honorable men, an inestimable and in- 
dispensable acquisition to our country, and 
these adopted citizens of every land and tongue 
indorse what I say. 

The adopted citizen who is not willing to 
adopt these sentiments cannot be a good 
American citizen. 



XXXIV. 



GETTING ON IN THE WORLD. 



Getting on in the world does not depend 
so much upon a man's surroundings as upon 
himself. Grod gives to every man wings strong 
enough to bear him far above his surround- 
ings. If a man does not get up and on he 
should not blame fate, but himself. The man 
who gets on in the world cultivates the higher 
attributes of his manhood, devotes his time to 
learning how to do better work, which so often 
insures that prosperity which clamor and com- 
■plaining never win. The men at the summit 
fought their way up from the bottom. Colum- 
bus was the son of a weaver, Homer of a small 
farmer, Demosthenes of a cutler, Franklin of 
a tallow-chandler and soap-boiler, and Shake- 
speare of a wool-stapler. Robert Burns was 
a plowman, Napoleon was of an obscure family 
at Corsica, John Jacob Astor sold apples on 
the streets of New York, A. T. Stewart swept 
out his own store, Cornelius Vanderbilt laid 
the foundation of his vast fortune with fifty 
dollars given him by his mother, Lincoln was 



168 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



a rail-splitter, Grant was a tanner, and Gar- 
field was a towboy on a canal. Our most suc- 
cessful men began life without a dollar. By 
hard work and unconquerable perseverance 
you can rise above the low places of poverty. 
True, you may never shine in the galaxy of 
the great ones of this earth, but you may fill 
your lives and homes with blessings and make 
the world wiser and better and nobler for your 
having lived in it. Financial success won at 
the sacrifice of conscience is the worst kind of a 
f ailure. Many crimes have been committed in 
the name of success. Many men have obtained 
thousands and millions of dollars by legal or 
illegal thieving and bought their way into 
society, who ought to be in the penitentiary. 
Cash cannot take the place of character. 
Better to be a man than merely a million- 
aire. " 'Tis only noble to be good." My pre- 
scriptions for getting on in the world are 
simple. 

First. Enter into that business for which 
nature intended you. 

Second. Stand on your own legs. The best 
thing to do is to throw a young man over- 
board. No man ever drowned who was worth 
saving. 

Third. Work. Ninety per cent, of what 
men call genius is only a talent for hard work. 



GETTING ON IN THE WOKLD. 



169 



The work which most of our successful men 
do almost staggers belief. 

Fourth. Have an aim in life, or your ener- 
gies will all be wasted and your most indus- 
trious days will be recklessly squandered. 

Fifth. Inscribe on your banner, " Luck is 
a fool, Pluck is a hero." 

Sixth. Don't try to begin at the top. 

Seventh. Watch the littles and you will 
come out clear. 

Eighth. Be punctual. A man who is care- 
less about time is careless about business and 
cannot be trusted. 

Ninth. Let your revenues always exceed 
your expenditures. 

Tenth. Be polite. No policy pays like 
politeness. 

Eleventh. Be upright and down square. 

Twelfth. Avoid whiskey and tobacco. 

Thirteenth. Be generous. Meanness is a 
most despicable blemish. 

Fourteenth. Don't marry until you can 
support a wife. 

Fifteenth. Make all the money you can 
honestly, and do good with it while you live. 

Be your own executor. 



XXXV. 

GET-RICH-QUICK SCHEMES. 

GtET-rich-quick schemes flood our land to- 
day. Fortunes are offered the people for 
nothing. The names of scores of men prom- 
inent in church and state are published as di- 
rectors, used as decoy-ducks to draw in the 
unsuspecting. On every hand are transparent 
frauds, offers to make you rich for a few dol- 
lars, land that will quadruple in a year, and 
so-called benevolent societies that will in a few 
years give you one thousand dollars for about 
three hundred, and meanwhile take care of you 
in case of sickness. The American people love 
to be humbugged, and schemes that would 
pay a legitimate interest often fall through, 
while the fraud gets the crowd. The only ex- 
planation of the prosperity of these transpar- 
ent frauds is in Carlyle's concise census of the 
population — " mostly fools." 

The misfortune about these schemes is that 
the poor man is generally the one caught in 
them. I have known scores of men who by 
long and severe struggling were enabled at 

170 



GET-EICH-QUICK SCHEMES. l7l 



last to save something. It cost them much 
self-denial and care. A hundred plausible 
schemes present themselves, all promising a 
safe and large return, all demonstrating ten, 
twenty or thirty per cent, as certain. The 
pulpit speaks of the snares formed to entrap 
the wasteful, thoughtless, prodigal man, and 
it is high time that it spoke of the schemes 
more cunningly devised to entrap the indus- 
trious and the thrifty. Multitudes of such per- 
sons have had their all swept away, and have 
passed their old age in poverty and want, ren- 
dered all the more bitter by the reflection that 
their suffering was the result of their credu- 
lity in trusting to the flattering tales of schem- 
ing scoundrels. Know this, that no man will 
give you a dollar for fifty cents, unless it is a 
counterfeit. Glood mines never go begging for 
stockholders. A fine spring chicken on your 
plate is worth a whole flock of wild geese on 
the wing. Leave speculation alone to the men 
who can afford to lose the money. Be content 
with a small but certain return and run none 
of the risks which a great percentage usually 
involves. You can tell swindling schemes by 
their brilliant colors, plausible appearance and 
attractive bait. "All is not gold that glitters," 
and the more glittering there is the less gold 
in general. 



XXXVI. 



WEDDING PRESENTS. 

One of the most extravagant and hypocrit- 
ical customs of to-day is the habit of giving 
wedding presents. Hundreds of invitations 
are sent to acquaintances, as well as relatives 
and friends, and their presence is not so much 
desired as their presents. This is surely a 
successful way of begging fancy household 
articles. Many of the presents, being dupli- 
cated, are sold or exchanged at a sacrifice for 
other "more useful" articles. The largeness 
of a man's heart, the size of his purse and so- 
cial standing are all determined by the extrav- 
agance of the present. Whether it can be 
afforded or not, people vie with each other, 
and think they must do as others do, for they 
would rather be out of the world than out of 
the fashion. Custom makes cowards of us all. 
Many wedding presents are never paid for, 
while others are bought on the instalment plan 
— dollar down, dollar a week. I have heard 
many people, and especially poorly salaried 

172 



WEDDING PEESENTS. 



173 



society swells, bewail the great expense of this 
custom. We have frequently heard brides and 
grooms speak of their presents in a way which 
showed that the estimates of the various friend- 
ships were based on the value of the gift — 
speaking with delight of the generousness 
of the one, and condemning the unexpected 
meanness of the other. 

Gifts should be tokens of love and good 
wishes, and not forced by custom. They 
should be free-will offerings, and not a uni- 
versally expected conformity to an arbitrary 
unwritten law of society. Dare to break 
away from this hypocrisy. 



XXXVII. 



POLICE MATKONS. 

The annual report of the Police Department 
shows that there were 147,634 lodgings in sta- 
tion-houses furnished homeless and friendless 
persons last year — 78,523 to men, and 69,111 
to women. 

" Oh, it was pitiful ! 
Near a whole city full, 
Home she had none ! " 

Let us hear no more about "Darkest 
Africa, and the Way Out" until we have 
found a way out of "Darkest New York." 
Think of 82,000 arrests in one year ! of which 
19,926 were women, 9514 boys under twenty 
years of age, and 991 of girls under twenty 
years of age. Most of these arrests were for 
drunkenness. I would like to know why the 
poor are always arrested and punished for 
getting drunk, and the rich never. In other 
words, it is a crime in New York for a poor 
man to do what a rich man may do with im- 
punity. 

174 



POLICE MATEONS. 



175 



Thousands who apply for lodging in the 
station-houses are not intoxicated; they are 
not guilty of any crime ; they are only mon- 
eyless, homeless, friendless. The men and 
women, the boys and girls, while not hud- 
dled together, are all within hearing and fre- 
quently in plain sight of one another ; and to 
compel innocent girls and women to come in 
contact with the degraded and to be searched 
by a man certainly tends to make them lose 
their self-respect, and when a woman once 
loses that, her case is hopeless indeed. The 
station-houses of New York need the refining 
influences which a matron would impart. The 
objection that the station-house is not a place 
for a decent woman is the strongest argument 
possible in favor of the reform. It is unnat- 
ural for women to be cared for by persons not 
of their own sex. Woman knows how to sym- 
pathize with woman. In the name of God and 
decency, I demand that the unfortunate girls 
and women imprisoned in our station-houses 
receive the kind treatment which competent 
matrons alone can give. What is your influ- 
ence in this matter? We allow men and 
women to be thrust into cells as if society 
had a grudge against them, and they in turn 
have a grudge against society. Give them a 
hand instead of a heel. Many of them would 



176 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



leap with joy at the prospect of reformation 
if there was a way opened for them into 
decency. Many of them are dying for want 
of a kind word. Don't blame them. It is not 
their fault, bnt their misfortune. They were 
born that way. If our mothers had been blas- 
phemers and our fathers sots, and we had been 
rocked in the cradle of vice, we too would sleep 
in station-houses instead of palaces. Blood 
always tells, especially bad blood. The wrongs 
heaped upon the innocent often, and unfortu- 
nate always, we should not as Christians be 
able to behold without, like our pure and piti- 
ful Master, weeping over them. New York in 
the matter of caring for the homeless poor is 
a burning disgrace to our boasted Christian 
civilization. That old legend of a monster to 
satisfy whose appetite a city had every year 
to sacrifice a number of its virgins, who, amid 
the lamentations of their mothers and the grief 
of their kindred, were led away trembling to 
his bloody den, is no fable in New York City. 
That monster is among us. 

Woman, have more sympathy for your fall- 
en sisters ! Your inhumanity to your own 
sex makes countless thousands mourn. "Wom- 
an, be imbued with the large loving-hearted- 
ness of the Grospel, that is unhappy if others 
are miserable, that will not eat its own bread 



POLICE MATKONS. 



177 



and drink its own cup alone, that is not con- 
tent to be safe without also saving others. 

Parents, guard your children sedulously. 
Fold them early. Before the night brings out 
the ravenous wolf and the wily fox and the 
roaring Hon, have all your lambs at home; 
prayerfully commit them to the keeping of an 
all-present Grod. 



XXXVIII. 



STRICTURES ON STRIKES. 

Wages can never be equalized. So long as 
there are more men who can dig ditches than 
run a railroad, so long will the railroad presi- 
dent get more wages than the digger of ditches. 
The ox will always eat more than the rabbit. 
The premium of higher wages is the great in- 
centive to improvement. Take this away and 
your workmen are like dried apples on a string, 
all of one sort and all of one size. Our union- 
workmen pin each other down, they crush the 
best laborers down to the level of mediocrity, 
and cut the heads off their best men. 

The capitalists have come up mostly from 
the multitude. You say they were lucky. I 
say they were plucky. They got on, but never 
getting off— on sprees, and spending their time 
in striking and clamoring for higher wages 
and fewer hours' work per day. They culti- 
vated the higher attributes of manhood, de- 
voted their time to learning how to do better 

178 



STEICTUEES ON STRIKES. 



179 



work, which so often insures that prosperity 
which clamoring, complaining and striking 
never win. 

Let every one start out to be a capitalist 
himself. When you have saved a dollar from 
your wages, you have already begun to be a 
capitalist. Straighten up, reach up, grow up, 
save up, this is the only way you can get up 
and crowd off the platform the small faction 
who abuse their power. 

If you want to strike, strike against the 
drink. Keep it up, and relief will come to 
the working classes. The late Emperor Will- 
iam and the famous Von Moltke unite in 
declaring that German beer-drinking is the 
chief curse of the laboring classes. The late 
Cardinal Manning of England and the most 
distinguished judges of the British courts, as 
well as those men in America who are seeking 
to ameliorate the condition of the working 
classes, are agreed that the drink is the worst 
foe of labor. 

.The cost of labor to manufacture crude 
whiskey is about 3J per cent, on the value of 
the liquor at the place of manufacture, while, 
as a distinguished authority has shown, for 



180 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



labor in the aggregate productions of the State 
there is paid 17.97 per cent, of their value at 
the place of production. In other words, by 
buying $100 worth of the aggregate manufact- 
ures of our State $14.38 go to labor in their 
production, while for every $100 spent for 
liquors to produce them will give only $1.94 
to labor. Work will be plenty and wages high 
by making a demand for useful articles. Let 
the workingmen spend their money for food, 
clothing and other necessaries of life with the 
millions that they now waste for drink, and 
we will be able to give work to all our unem- 
ployed, wages will be high, and labor will no 
longer be " the slave of capital." 

Immigration causes nearly all our labor 
troubles. Within the last three years we 
admitted into the American labor market 
427,000 Hungarians, Italians and Poles. 
What can our laboring men gain by strik- 
ing for higher wages when every steamship 
brings hundreds of starving immigrants who 
are glad to get work at any price ? We pay 
enormous sums for the ostensible purpose of 
protecting the American workman, yet every- 
where the pauper laborer of Europe swarms 
in his path and competes with native industry 
by offering to do work for half the price paid 



STRICTURES ON STRIKES. 



181 



the American laborer. Thousands came under 
service to contractors who sell their labor. 
You can buy one or a thousand laborers from 
the Italian padrones in this city. 

Our present system of importing labor free 
means to degrade the American workman to 
a level with the pauper laborers of Europe. 
Neither high protection nor free trade makes 
wages so high as scarcity of hands. If we 
could stop immigration for twenty years, 
high tariff, low tariff or no tariff, the Ameri- 
can workman would enjoy prosperity never 
dreamt of. 



XXXIX. 



TOBACCO THE FOE OE WOMAN. 

Tobacco is the foe of woman. It withdraws 
man from her society — banishing him for 
hours from the civilizing sex. Thackeray 
says : " The fact is, the cigar is a rival to the 
ladies, and their conqueror, too." The Turks 
shut the women in ; we shut them out. Many 
physicians regard much of the invalidism of 
women due to the poisoned atmosphere 
around them by the smoking members of 
their household. Many a woman have I 
heard speak feelingly of the clean atmosphere 
of houses untainted with tobacco. How many 
a delicate woman is affected by the least 
tobacco breath, and then think of her yoked 
to one who uses the weed perpetually. How 
much of life's pleasure is spoiled by this ever- 
following foe. Everywhere you go is splashed 
the disgusting fluid. The passages between 
the seats of our railroad and street-cars are, 
as a rule, in such a foul condition that no lady 

182 



TOBACCO THE FOE OF WOMAN. 183 



can walk with safety or comfort from the seat 
to the door. There's little use in carefully- 
holding up your dresses and looking warily 
from place to place. You might as well take 
the first seat that comes. No wonder the 
women lose their temper almost every time 
they travel in our cars. Just look at the men : 
they chew and spit, they read and spit, they 
talk and spit, they laugh and spit, and some 
swear and spit. 

"Is smoking offensive to you!" What is 
the woman to do % If she tells the truth, the 
gentleman will not lay down his cigar, but 
retreat to enjoy his smoke elsewhere, and the 
woman feels that she has been guilty of rude- 
ness. If smoking is not an annoyance, how 
do you interpret the conspicuous posters 
everywhere warning against it where the ladies 
gather ! It is from a loving readiness on the 
part of the women to sacrifice their own com- 
fort to the gratification of their dear ones that 
they submit to this tyrant, and in this, together 
with lack of information on the subject, we 
find an explanation of its almost universal 
sway. 

In a certain town a number of young women 
formed a "No society" ; that is, they would 
have no intercourse with any young man who 
used tobacco, or who was not strictly temper- 



184 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



ate. At first the young men made themselves 
merry over this, declaring that they could 
stand out as long as the girls. But these girls 
quietly held to their resolves ; and gradually 
one young man after another broke from his 
obnoxious habit, till tobacco and the wine-cup 
were banished from the circle. 

If all the women had the courage of their 
convictions, gentlemen, your time would be 
short. Instead of, for policy's sake, condoning 
an offense which puts in jeopardy your health, 
which tends to lower aesthetic tone, and in- 
volves a train of miseries, women, speak out 
boldly, and exert your influence, singly and 
collectively, against tobacco, and you cannot 
fail to batter down this ugly brown idol past 
all resurrection. 

In true gallantry the American is ahead of 
all the world. Could we secure this most- 
devoutly-wished-for reform, it would add the 
finishing touch, and exalt this same American 
into the ideal gentleman. 



XL. 



OUR WHITE SLAVES. 

" So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are 
done under the sun : and behold the tears of such as ivere op- 
pressed, and they had no comforter ; and on the side of their 
oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.'' 1 — 

ECCLESIASTES iv. 1. 

I had read so much in the daily papers about 
the "sweating" system on the East Side in 
New York City, that I determined to see for 
myself if these things were true. In company 
with a labor agitator and a newspaper man, 
both of whom thoroughly understood the sys- 
tem, I started on my trip of investigation. 
The reporter and the writer were introduced 
to the contractors by the labor man as factory 
inspectors. That the contractors did not know 
that we were not factory inspectors proves 
that the inspectors do not inspect. 

I saw human beings almost piled upon one 
another and buried out of sight in masses 
of materials, which smelt as powerfully and 
as poisonously as the wretched toilers them- 
selves. 

185 



186 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



The factories are out-of-the-way places, bed- 
rooms, rear lofts, and subcellars. In many 
instances the employed live, work and sleep 
huddled together in these shops. 

Ten years ago there were only 10 sweaters' 
shops in New York, but now there are 750, 
and work that brought $5 and $6 then realizes 
only $1.50 now. Hardly any one will believe 
the truth unless he has seen it. If the philan- 
thropic people of this city could visit these 
places, they would soon band together for their 
abolition. These people have suffered so long, 
they have borne so much, that the wonder is 
that they are as moderate as they are. Can 
you imagine the feelings of a man who has to 
work eighty to ninety hours a week for $4 ? 
There are 16,000 operators in garments for 
women and operators in cloaks for children ; 
there are 24,000 clothing-makers. There are 
twelve Hebrew papers published for this pop- 
ulation. Some of these papers are socialistic. 
These men look about them, and so great 
are the contrasts in society that their faith is 
shaken. 

The contractors are generally men from the 
ranks of the immigrants. They hire a loft, or 
two bare rooms, for about $18 per month, get 
a pile of clothing from the manufacturer, who 
tells the price he will pay for each completed 



OUR WHITE SLAVES. 



187 



garment, and then they hire their hands. The 
market is overstocked with labor, and there 
are hundreds ready to take the place at any 
price. Nowadays the cloak is the product of 
fifteen poor refugees (each making a part), 
huddled together under the foulest physical 
conditions, working from fifteen to eighteen 
hours a day as fast as their feet and hands 
can go. I don't think that I found among the 
sweaters' employees an operator forty years 
old. They die or are struck down by disease 
long before that time. 

But you must now take a trip with me to a 
sweater's den on Mulberry Street. The en- 
trance is narrow and squalid, up three flights 
of ladder-like stairs, through a door, rickety 
and grimy. Taking us for officers, we were 
hailed, " Vat you vanta 1 " " These gentlemen," 
said our spokesman, " are factory inspectors. 
You must answer any question they put to 
you." We are in a small, poorly ventilated 
loft. The windows are black with dirt from 
poisonous fluff from garments. The air is 
stifling, the ceiling low, the heat intense. To 
work as prisoners for crime would have been 
a respite for these sad-faced foreigners. 

The following figures were obtained from 
the " boss sweaters " themselves and are there- 
fore reliable : 



188 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



For making overcoats 

For making business coats 

For making trousers 

For making vests (per doz.) 

For making knee-pants (per doz.). ■ 
For making calico skirts (per doz,), 



$0 75 to $2 50 
32 to 1 50 
25 to 75 



1 00 to 3 00 
50 to 75 
30 to 45 



A large percentage is taken from this list 
of prices by the boss sweater as his profit, 
and after deducting the cost of carting, which 
the workman pays, it can easily be imagined 
how hard and long men and women mnst labor 
to obtain the ordinary necessities of life. For 
knee-pants, for which the." boss" gets sixty- 
five cents a dozen from the manufacturer, the 
sweated get only thirty-five cents. Almost 
everywhere we found children hard at work. 
As I thought of the joyous childhood up-town 
filled with innocent pleasure, and then con- 
templated these slaves of the needle working 
from twelve to eighteen hours a day in a mis- 
erable hovel for $1.50 to $4 a week, and then 
to sleep in a room with a dozen men and 
women, herding together like cattle, I said, 
What a subject for tears of compassion ! This 
injustice, oppression and suffering! What 
a theme for the reformer or the novelist ! 
These inhumanly long hours ! These starva- 
tion wages ! 

We went through the markets as Commis- 



OUK WHITE SLAVES. 



189 



sioners of the Board of Health. Hester Street 
was blockaded by the peddlers. " Meat, four 
cents a pound"; "Apples, five for a cent"; 
"Fish, four cents a pound," were common 
signs. Here are dozens of restaurants where 
a dinner with fish and two glasses of beer is 
to be had for thirteen cents. The quality of 
this food is better imagined than described. 
And the result of eating such food is a mind 
and body subject to an insatiable thirst for 
drink, and this fact makes drunkards of many 
who would otherwise be sober people. There 
is an intimate relation between the body and 
soul, and this question of better food for the 
poor is a moral question. The chief cause of 
poverty is drink, but the chief cause of the 
craving for drink among the poor is lack of 
healthy food. Napoleon once said, " The sol- 
dier has his heart in his abdomen ; " and Yon 
Moltke gave emphasis to the moral force of 
good food when he said, " In a campaign no 
food is costly except that which is bad." 

Philanthropists, investigate this system 
which grinds human creatures' lives into dust ! 
How long shall this injustice continue upon 
these helpless foreigners, giving the lie to 
American freedom 1 Out upon this corrupting 
farce ! Down with this entirely abominable 
system ! Let our Factory Law be so amended 



190 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



as to strike directly at tenement factories, and 
make a new law forbidding the toiler to labor 
fifteen to eighteen hours a day for the wages 
of a day, and a blow will be struck at this sys- 
tem from which it will never recover. Our 
duty is solemn and pressing. The words of 
the late Cardinal Manning to the Committee 
of the House of Lords, when investigating the 
sweaters' dens in London, are applicable here 
to-day : " If the hours of labor, resulting from 
an unregulated sale of a man's strength and 
skill, shall lead to the destruction of domestic 
life, to the neglect of children, to turning wives 
and mothers into living machines, and fathers 
and husbands into creatures of burden, the 
domestic life exists no longer, and we dare 
not go on in this path." 



XLI. 



THE POOE CHILDKEN OF NEW YOKE. 

" Famine is in their cheeks ; 
Need and oppression staring in their looks, 
Contempt and "beggary hang upon their backs." 

This is not only poetry, but the fact of 
thousands of children in New York City ; yet 
the merry laugh, the hearty shout and screams 
of delight, tell that God made childhood to be 
happy, and how even misery will forget itself 
in the buoyancy of youth. Beneath the shaggy 
bushes of hair and faces pinched with want, 
behold a sharp intelligence beyond their years. 
These little street arabs are already masters 
of imposture, lying, begging, stealing. No 
blame to them, but much blame to those who 
neglected them — they had otherwise perished. 
There is so much misery among New York's 
poor that we have almost ceased to be aston- 
ished at any amount of misery suffered. 

We have splendid hospitals and schools 
where thousands of children are fed and 
clothed and educated, but what provision have 

191 



192 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



we made for these children of crime, misery 
and misfortune ! None ! I donbt if any pul- 
pit in this city ever thought that this question 
was important enough for discussion. These 
homeless and godless poor little ones that we 
are neglecting into vice and starving into crime 
should through Christian charity be pressing 
the narrow path of life. Those cursing little 
lips should be singing the praises of God. The 
Spartans who threw their sickly children to 
the wild beasts were merciful compared with 
that indifference which in our city gives up 
the destitute children to be eaten up by their 
own depravities. 

Why are these thousands of children upon 
the streets and not at school ? Listen to the 
reply : "No room ! " If there were room the 
reply would be of the parents, " Can't afford 
to keep them there." They must beg, and 
next thing to begging is stealing. They are 
cast into prison; the jail brand is on their 
brow ; self-respect is lost ; they descend from 
step to step till they end their unhappy careers, 
the victims of a poverty for which they were 
not to blame, and for a neglect on the part of 
a Christian public for which a righteous Grod 
will one day call them to judgment. 

If these poor children cannot attend school 
unless they starve, feed them in order to edu- 



THE POOK CHILDKEN OF NEW YORK. 193 

cate them. Food is a powerful magnet to 
draw a hungry child to school. Don't mock 
with books a child who wants for bread. Pre- 
vention of crime is cheaper than its punish- 
ment. There is only one way of securing 
the amelioration of these outcast children, 
and that is by making their maintenance a 
bridge and a stepping-stone to their educa- 
tion. " When thy father and thy mother for- 
sake thee, the Lord will take thee up." How ? 
By putting it into the hearts of his people to 
do a father's and a mother's part to those who 
are fatherless and motherless, or to those still 
more unhappy children who have parents but 
would be better off if they had none. 

Let there be schools for all the children; 
make education compulsory, and provide the 
means for the compulsion. Let the school- 
houses be open evenings, and filled with books, 
papers and games. Put your hands on the 
hearts of the little ones, surround them with 
benign and holy influences, and these children, 
though their knees are now out, their elbows 
out, their toes out, and their souls Christless, 
will grow up to be men of might and men of 
G-od. 



XLII. 



DE. BEIGGS'S ACQUITTAL. 

De. Beiggs's acquittal is a vindication of 
historic Presbyterianisni. John Calvin, who 
so clearly expounded and so perfectly systema- 
tized the Pauline theology as to connect with 
it his illustrious name, made Geneva the capi- 
tal of European reform and the cradle of civil 
and religious liberty. The historic distinction 
of the Presbyterian Church is its intimate 
connection with civil and religious liberty. 
Tyrants and despots, whether civil or religious, 
have always hated Presbyterianisni. King 
James said at the Hampton Court Conference, 
" Ye are aiming at a Scots Presbytery, which 
agrees with monarchy as well as God and the 
devil." To the Calvinistic Melville he said, 
" There will be no quiet in this country till 
half a dozen of ye be hanged or banished." 
" Tush, sir ! " replied Melville, threaten your 
courtiers in that manner ; but, God be glorified, 
it will not be in your power to hang or exile 
his truth." " The doctrine " (Presbyterianisni), 

194 



DE. BEIGGS'S ACQUITTAL. 195 



said Charles I., "is anti-monarchical — no 
bishop, no king." The Westminster Review, 
which certainly has no love for Presbyterian- 
ism, says, " Calvin sowed the seeds of liberty 
in Europe." Again it says, " Calvinism saved 
Europe." Bossuet, the Roman Catholic his- 
torian, speaking of the General Synod of 
France in 1559, says : "A great social revolu- 
tion has been effected. Within the center of 
the French monarchy Calvin and his disciples 
established a spiritual republic," and out of it 
came the French Republic. Macaulay has 
shown that the great revolution of 1688, which 
gave liberty to England, was purchased by the 
labors and the blood of the Presbyterians of 
Scotland. Froude admits that the Scotch owe 
their national existence to the teachings of 
John Knox. The same author says, " Calvin 
has done more for constitutional liberty than 
any one man." 

The Presbyterian Synod in Philadelphia in 
1775 was the first religious body to declare for 
American independence, and to counsel and 
encourage the people who were then about 
taking up arms. The " Mecklenburg Declara- 
tion," proclaimed by the Scotch-Irish Presby- 
terians of North Carolina, May 20, 1775, and 
written by a Presbyterian elder and Princeton 
graduate, Brevard, is so similar in sentiment 



196 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



and expression that Jefferson must have bor- 
rowed from Brevard, who wrote a year before 
Jefferson wrote. 

Charles Inglis, rector of Trinity Church, in 
reporting to " The Church Missionary Society " 
at London, says that " without one exception 
all our clergy are on the side of the crown, 
and after strict inquiry I do not know one of 
the Presbyterian clergy who does not, by every 
effort in his power, promote all the measures 
of Congress, however extravagant." 

Chief -justice Tilghman says that " the 
framers of the Constitution of the United 
States borrowed very much of the form of our 
republic from that form of Presbyterian gov- 
ernment developed in the constitution of the 
Presbyterian Church in Scotland." Bancroft 
says, " He that will not honor and respect the 
influence of John Calvin knows but little of 
the origin of American liberty." A church so 
pre-eminently identified with civil and relig- 
ious liberty would blot her history by now 
turning a man out of her communion for say- 
ing things which don't exactly square with the 
Confession of Faith — a confession that origi- 
nated more than two hundred years ago in a 
divided assembly, and which articles were 
even then carried by a bare majority, with 
strong protest against them. 



DR. BEIGGS'S ACQUITTAL. 197 



There are many intellectual roads to heaven. 
The only intolerance we should tolerate is in- 
tolerance of evil, and the only narrowness we 
should know is narrowness at the point of 
character. Let our brethren henceforth keep 
their differences to themselves, and not give 
the enemy occasion to blaspheme. As John 
Calvin said, " Let us have no discord on ac- 
count of our differences, but let us march in 
one solid column under the banners of the 
Captain of our salvation, and with undivided 
counsels pour the legions of the cross upon 
the territories of darkness and death." 



XLIII. 



A TKIUMPH FOE AMERICANISM . 

The restoration of Dr. McGrlynn to his 
priestly functions, unconditionally and with- 
out apology, in spite of his defiant attitude 
and unrelenting criticisms of persons and pol- 
icies in the church ever . since his excommu- 
nication, is the most significant ecclesiastical 
event of a generation. It is one of the grand- 
est triumphs of the century for Americanism. 
The ultramontane interpretation of the power 
of the Pope to lord over the consciences of 
men has received a blow from which it may 
never recover. It is as inconsistent with our 
American liberties to yield allegiance to the 
Pope as to the Czar. The American Catholic 
who believes that he must unresistingly and 
uninquiringly obey the Pope or offend God is 
happily becoming the exception and not the 
rule, especially among representative laymen. 

There are Catholics in this country no more 
American than they were before they left 
Europe, and it is gratifying that they have 

198 



A TEIUMPH FOR AMERICANISM. 199 



received no comfort from the Pope's represen- 
tative. The Catholic Church is not only the 
greatest police force in America, but one of 
the greatest moral forces tending to the weal 
or woe of the Eepublic as it adapts itself or 
not to the spirit of our American institutions. 

The Catholic Church in America is more 
American than Roman, and the McGrlynn in- 
cident and Father Corrigan's triumph mean 
that the church will grow into closer touch 
with American life and institution ; and pol- 
icy rather than principle forces the church 
to adjust herself to the sacred rights of free 
thought, free speech and free action, the im- 
mortal principles of Americanism. 

Papal interference with politics reduced 
Italy to a hand-organ and a monkey, Spain to 
beggary, Ireland to exile, and American Cath- 
olics will profit by their example. But the 
church seems to have quit politics. She is 
minding her own business, and the liberaliz- 
ing of the Catholic Church will win to her the 
unchurched masses, especially if the church 
will seek the solution of those social problems 
which have alienated the masses from the 
church. Such old words with new meanings, 
as altruism, anarchy, communism, nihilism, 
socialism and the like, show that sociology is 
the great problem of the day — the problem 



200 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



which Protestant ministers ignore with owl- 
like stupidity, while they are spending their 
time in spinning theological cobwebs and 
building speculative castles in the air. 

Dr. McGrlynn's restoration is a victory for 
our public schools — one of the corner-stones 
of our government. The American Catholics 
read with profit the course the church pursued 
as to popular education where she had undis- 
puted sway. In Italy 73 per cent, of the pop- 
ulation are illiterate, Spain 80 per cent., and 
Mexico 93 per cent. The American Catholics 
no longer believe in the proverb that " igno- 
rance is the mother of devotion." The church 
is not only opening schools of her own, but 
many parents send their children to the public 
schools, and some of her archbishops and 
priests are eloquent defenders of what we may 
proudly call the glory of our Republic. Grlad 
beyond telling am I that the Pope has at last 
recognized that it would be a vital blunder to 
continue in the organized hostility to the pub- 
lic school which the radical ecclesiastics have 
heretofore pursued, and it is to be hoped, as a 
result of his wise counsels, that there will be 
an end to this exasperating controversy. 

We are engaged, as Bacon said, in " the he- 
roic work of building a nation," and whether 
Catholics or Protestants, let us remember that 



A TKIUMPH FOE AMERICANISM. 201 



we are Americans first, and no despotism shall 
be introduced here, whether in politics or re- 
ligion. Let ns be free men in politics and re- 
ligion — free to read, to think, to act, and to 
control our own affairs. Let ns adopt the 
American plan of liberty, discard the timorous 
fear of error, and trust to the mighty power 
of truth. Cast off slavery ; every man go to 
the fountains of truth and taste and judge for 
himself. Methinks I see the dawn of a coming 
day when Catholic and Protestant, Jew and 
Grentile, will unite as American citizens in 
maintaining our public schools and all our 
public institutions on a public basis. 



XLIV. 



SHAFTS AT RANDOM SENT. 

Municipal Corruption. 

The sword of Justice, which should be a 
terror to evil-doers, rusts in its sheath. The 
machinery of our law lies in City Hall in 
polished inactivity. Vice is allowed to so 
parade our streets as to interfere with the 
freedom of the virtuous, and establishes itself 
under police protection in decent communities, 
and by creating the worst kind of nuisances 
destroys the property of a neighborhood, and 
evil-doers are protected at the expense of the 
good. 

Clean Government 

The only government decent men ought to 
tolerate is honorable government. The man 
who neglects to take sides on this question of 
clean government for our city makes choice 
of ease and quiet at the expense of purity and 
power. If you want a clean city, vote to get 
the government into clean hands. The great 
failure of our Republican system is the failure 

202 



SHAFTS AT RANDOM SENT. 



203 



to give our cities decent government. We 
will have good government when good citizens 
come up to the mark of good citizenship, when 
men vote as they pray. I have the profound- 
est contempt for the man who prays like an 
angel and votes like the devil. 

Treating. 

Treating is the cause of more than one half 
of our drunkenness. America is the only 
country where this foolish and expensive show 
of hospitality is recognized. Many young men 
are established in intemperance because they 
feel themselves bound by a law of reciprocal 
generosity to treat. 

Wanted—Old-fashioned Mothers. 

What America wants now is about one mil- 
lion old-fashioned mothers who shall realize 
that the grandest and mightiest institution on 
earth is the home. The duties of motherhood 
are nowadays considered too commonplace 
tasks for women. So when a child is born a 
nurse is hired, who for a compensation agrees 
to take charge of the little immortal. She 
hands over to a mere hireling the soul-mother- 
ing which Grod has intrusted to the mother. 
The little one draws into its inner being the 
life of this uncultured soul. The young mother 



204 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



is free to keep on in the old . gay life, free to 
pet pngs, to dress and drive, to enjoy balls 
and operas, to pay gossip visits and attend 
" teas," which Oliver Wendell Holmes well de- 
scribes as " a giggle, gabble, gobble and git," 
while she discharges her trust for an immor- 
tal life by proxy. Oh, that God would give 
every mother a vision of the glory and splen- 
dor of the work that is given to her when a 
babe is placed on her bosom to be nursed and 
trained ! 

The Bible in the Public Schools. 

If this generation gets the Bible out of our 
public schools, putting the ban of sectarian 
ignominy upon it, another generation will not 
be likely to restore it. The Bible is the prop- 
erty of mankind and therefore not a sectarian 
book. The Bible is older than any sect in the 
world. Our English translation of the Bible 
is no more a Protestant book than the Bible 
itself in the original is a Protestant book. 

You are bound to suppose as much con- 
science on the Protestant as on the Catholic 
side. Shall the conscience of the smaller num- 
ber bind that of the larger f If conscience is 
to be respected, then the greater amount of 
conscience is to be respected rather than the 
smaller. If it be found on the side of the 



SHAFTS AT EANDOM SENT. 



205 



Bible it ought to prevail in the right to have 
the Bible. Our Catholic brethren tell us that 
they have a right to demand of the government 
a school according to their principles because 
they pay their taxes. Then the majority of 
tax-payers have the same right to demand a 
school according to their principles. 

Divorce the public schools from the Bible, 
and you divorce them from the respect and 
patronage of Christians, and so divorced they 
cannot stand. 

Bribery. 

Political jobbery and corruption are fast 
undermining the efficiency of our free institu- 
tions and debasing the standard of public vir- 
tue. Politics has become a mere race for pelf 
and self. Patriotism is abandoned and prin- 
ciple is almost a forgotten virtue. It is there- 
fore in place for the pulpit to call the atten- 
tion of candidates and politicians to this evil. 
Our State law makes it unlawful, directly or 
indirectly, to pay, lend or offer money or any 
other thing to a voter to induce him to vote or 
to refrain from voting. He who by false reg- 
istration, colonizing, intimidation, buying or 
selling votes, or in any way whatever, inter- 
feres with the American ballot is unworthy 
of citizenship. If ever a man is justified in 
thrashing another, it is to thrash him whose 



206 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



soul is so dead to honor as to trade in 
American citizenship. 

Athletics gone Mad. 

Pascal declared that " disease is the natural 
state of Christians," and many persons still 
think that asceticism is righteousness and 
dyspepsia godliness. The enthusiasm for ath- 
letics to-day is a reaction from the unwise 
indifference of the past, The Israelites wor- 
shiped a calf of gold. The Americans bow 
down before a calf of flesh. Athletics is the 
principal topic of conversation. The boxing- 
glove may yet be woven upon our flag. Col- 
leges take their grades according to their rec- 
ords in sports. Noses are smashed and fingers 
broken to the delight of assembled thousands. 
We squander more money on theaters, base- 
ball, horse races, prize fights and clubs than 
we do on food and clothes, education and re- 
ligion. The major part of our sports totally 
unfits those who take part in them for the 
active work of life. Our sporting craze is the 
indirect cause of nine-tenths of our financial 
crimes. 

This sporting tendency is, indeed, our na- 
tional sin. The chief cause of the downfall of 
Rome was the sporting habits of the people. 
With the brute fight before us at New Orleans, 



SHAFTS AT KANDOM SENT. 207 



let the American pulpit say no more about 
the gladiatorial shows of heathen Rome or the 
bull fights of Spain or Mexico. All decent 
people rejoiced in the New Orleans result, be- 
cause they had contempt for the strong brute 
who was vanquished. Strength without char- 
acter is revolting. 

Athletics is desirable. I hope its result will 
be a finer race. But if you cultivate the phys- 
ical exclusively you have a savage. Brawn 
and brain, muscle and manhood, strength and 
character, must be blended to make a strong 
man. George MacDonald gives sound advice 
to those who have the upbringing of children 
when he counsels them to treat them " as souls 
having bodies rather than as bodies having 
souls." To depreciate the body to the exalta- 
tion of the soul, as though it were at best an 
encumbrance, is without support in the Bible. 

Immigration and Labor. 

When employment can be had at all in 
the Old World, laborers receive the following 
wages, namely: 



In India (300,000,000 people). . . 
In Eussia (100,000,000 people).. 

In Sweden 

In Denmark 

In Norway. , 



but 10 cents per day. 

but 25 to 50 cents per day. 
but 26 to 52 cents per day. 
but 26 to 50 cents per day. 
but 26 to 52 cents per day. 



208 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



In Finland 

In Spain 

In Italy 

In France 

In Germany 

In Austro-Hungary 
In Great Britain . . . 



but 26 to 52 cents per day. 

but 40 to 60 cents per day. 

but 50 to 90 cents per day. 

but 50 to 90 cents per day. 
but 45 to 75 cents per day. 

but 45 to 75 cents per day. 
but 62 to $1.08 cents per day. 



A careful examination of the prices current 
in England and the United States proves that 
a dollar will buy more tea, coffee, lamp-oil, 
flour, meat, butter, bread, sugar and potatoes 
in the United States than it will in England 
or any other part of Europe, while a single 
pound of beef in many of . these foreign coun- 
tries costs as much as a day's wages will buy. 

Through our unrestricted immigration all 
the world competes with our workmen in our 
own country. The thousands upon thousands 
that are idle in every land in the Old World 
come to America to the detriment of our own 
workmen. If immigration continues, how 
long will the American workman be the best 
housed, the best fed and the best paid work- 
man in the world ? The immigrant of to-day 
not only lowers the dignity and debases the 
blood of labor, but is driving the American 
laborer from our mills, shops and markets, 
and if the present tide continues for twenty 
years we will see many of our best citizens 
going from the United States and the scum 



SHAFTS AT RANDOM SENT. 209 



of Europe will take their places. The time 
was when the immigrants growing dissatisfied 
with a manufacturing center could emigrate 
to the West and take up land on which to 
build a home. That day exists only in history. 
Our government has squandered the good land 
with a lavish hand, and though there are 
millions of acres still unoccupied it must be 
remembered that it is land so poor that you 
could not raise a row on it. 

Europe's own sins produced the scabs on its 
body politic, and they have long enough es- 
caped punishment by sending their paupers 
and criminals to America. Let these degraded 
hordes of unenlightened nations remain where 
they are until they have shaken the foun- 
dations of every monarchy across the water, 
rather than see the only home in which free- 
dom has a foothold vanish from the face of 
the political world. 

Home Rule for America. 

The total population in New York State in 
1891 numbered 5,997,853. This number was 
composed of 2,594,708 persons born of native 
parents (including the colored population of 
73,901), 1,837,453 born of foreign parents and 
1,565,692 foreigners, exceeding those born of 
native parents by 808,437. These millions 



210 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



concentrate largely in Albany, Kings, Erie, 
Eensselaer and New York counties. These 
counties are entitled to nearly one- half the 
members of the legislature. In Eensselaer 
County the foreigners have a majority of 13,- 
551 ; in Albany County the native-born pop- 
ulation is in a minority of 37,315 ; in Erie the 
whites of native parentage are in a minority 
of 148,887; in Kings 360,921; and in New 
York the foreign element has the immense 
majority of 948,653. When we remember how 
small pluralities determine our State and Pres- 
idential elections, it can be easily seen how 
small a figure the American cuts in the govern- 
ment of his native land. Home rule for Amer- 
ica may yet become an issue in our politics. 

Should immigration continue for ten years 
more to the extent of ten years past, the foreign 
element will have an overwhelming preponder- 
ance in the Northern States. No thoughtful 
well-wisher of the State or of the Republic 
can regard this tendency without apprehen- 
sion. Has not America become too much of 
a "free" country? 

People's Clubs. 

Under existing social conditions the saloon 
supplies a popular want, and the masses will 
stand by the saloon, though it is their worst 



SHAFTS AT RANDOM SENT. 211 



enemy, until they are provided with some 
counter attraction. The establishment of peo- 
ple's clubs, saloons without liquor, after the 
fashion of the coffee-houses in England, or the 
People's Palace in London, would, in a measure 
at least, counteract the saloon influence. 

Men want to go somewhere when the day's 
work is done. The saloons are attractive, 
many of them being invested with all the at- 
tractions which the wealth of brewers, who 
own most of them, can give them. The 
church must establish houses that beat the 
public-houses. Marble and glass, drapery and 
pictures, music and games are not the devil 's 
any more than they are ours. The people 
will have some retreat besides the boarding- 
house or tenement dens, and if the church 
won't furnish them a place to go to, the devil 
will. 

Never Judge by Appearances. 

Never before was our society so much of a 
" Vanity Fair." Every frog seems ambitious 
to swell himself to the dimensions of an ox. 
No wonder the frog bursts. 

Trying to be somebody when you are nobody 
is up-hill work. Leading a $10,000 existence 
on a $5000 salary is a fruitful source of finan- 
cial crime and moral suicide. A few can live 



212 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



in princely style, but the many must live mod- 
erately, or get money by dishonorable methods. 

Graudy parlors and empty kitchens ! Wives 
and daughters covered with costly ornaments 
(more diamonds (?) are worn to-day than all 
the diamond fields of the world could produce 
in a century), living in fine houses on fashion- 
able streets, while husbands and fathers are 
driven to distraction, many of them to prison, 
to obtain the gold to maintain the glitter. 
What shifts, what sleepless nights, simply 
that they may move in fashionable society 
and extract compliments -and flatteries which 
are as hollow as they are insincere. The 
gaudy, tinselled side out, rags and starvation 
within ! Misery magnificent ! Poverty gilded ! 
Smiles abroad, tears at home ! 

"Appearances deceive, 
And this one maxim is a standing rule, 
Men are not what they seem." 

Tobacco and Christianity. 

In 1499 Columbus, lying off Cuba, sent two 
men ashore, and they came back with the 
smoker's pedigree, to wit : The naked savages 
Uvist leaves together, light one end at the fire, 
and smoke like devils. 

The annual production of tobacco through- 
out the world is estimated at four billions of 



SHAFTS AT EANDOM SENT. 213 



pounds. This mass, if transformed into rolled 
tobacco two inches in diameter, would coil 
around the world sixty times. The yearly ex- 
pense of this poisonous growth, put into mar- 
ketable shape, reaches one thousand millions 
of dollars. This would build a hundred thou- 
sand churches, each costing ten thousand dol- 
lars ; or it would employ a million of preach- 
ers at one thousand dollars. 

In the United States 638,841 acres of land 
are devoted to this weed. The number of 
pounds raised is nearly five hundred millions, 
and four thousand millions of cigars and seven 
hundred millions of cigarettes are manufact- 
ured annually in our country. Our annual 
tobacco bill is over $250,000,000, while the 
total contributions of all the churches in 
America, for all causes, do not exceed $77,- 
000,000. Thousands of our church members 
spend ten dollars for tobacco to one dollar for 
church and charity. Fifty men in most of 
our churches spend more in the aggregate 
every year for tobacco than the whole church 
gives for charity. What records to appear on 
the heavenly ledger ! The money which the 
Christians of New York spend for tobacco 
would handsomely shelter, feed, educate and 
Christianize our suffering poor. What is your 
Christian influence in this respect? Don't 



214 



SANCTIFIED SPICE, 



you think it would be better for you to prac- 
tice a little self-denial ? 

One reason why this habit goes on from 
destruction to destruction is because so many 
ministers of the gospel are worshiping this 
ugly brown idol. I have seen spittoons in 
pulpits. The Levites were required to be 
thoroughly clean and pure. The rules of 
Buddha strictly interdict the use of tobacco. 
Shall we allow in our pulpits that which 
would not be tolerated in Jewish, Chinese or 
Indian temples 1 I know ministers who smoke 
until their breath is as rank as that of a foul 
beast and their clothes have the odor of the 
sewer. They smoke themselves into parson- 
itis, commonly called bronchitis ; they smoke 
until their nerves are shattered and their brains 
begin to soften, and their congregations must 
send them off to recuperate from their ex- 
hausting religious duties. 

Oh, for a breath from the heights of heaven 
that shall drive out this foul odor from the 
church and cleanse every Christian of this 
filthy habit ! 

Homicide and Suicide. 

Our land is red with the blood of the homi- 
cide and suicide. It is estimated that sixty- 
one persons die daily from premeditated vio- 



SHAFTS AT KANDOM SENT. 



215 



lence. Have you seen a paper in the last ten 
years that did not announce a murder or a 
passage out of life by one's own behest ? 

Homicides predominate in the South, while 
suicides are most frequent in the North. I 
account for this because one-third of the 
male population in the South carry concealed 
weapons, and because of a false standard of 
personal honor. A Tennessee judge says, 
"More than half the homicides which occur 
grow out of the debased practice of carrying 
on the person concealed weapons." 

In the North there are more suicides among 
women than in the South. The Southern 
woman has less marital misery. Divorces in 
the South are few. In Chicago alone there 
are more applications for divorces in one year 
than among the entire white native population 
in all the Southern States east of the Missis- 
sippi. Easy divorce causes the alarming in- 
crease of female suicides. 

A prolific source of suicidism is in the fact 
that we lay too high a value on success in life. 
Hence, if men fail to get rich, or are exposed, 
suicide is often the resort. The coward sneaks 
to death, the brave live on. He is not valiant 
that dares die, but that boldly bears calamity. 
Win success if you can, but don't blow your 
brains out because you fail. God, in the Bible, 



216 



SANCTIFIED SPICE. 



looks upon suicide as a crime, and that man 
who, in the use of his reason, dies by his own 
act goes straight into perdition. All the good 
men and women of the Bible left their earthly 
terminus to Grod. If any man had a right to 
commit suicide Job had. All his property 
gone, all his children slain, and from the 
crown of his head to the soles of his feet 
covered with boils, pestered by his wife, who 
was the worst boil he had — unmindful of all 
the comfortless talk about him, he sat down 
on a heap of ashes, with only a broken piece 
of pottery in the surgery of his wounds, yet 
crying in triumph, "All the days of my ap- 
pointed time will I wait till my change come." 

You may sometimes have reasons for want- 
ing to get to that sorrowless world where 
there are no notes to pay, no sickness to tor- 
ment, no wolf of want to keep away from the 
door of the house you love, but where there 
will be everything grand and without cost, 
but you will never get there by hurling your- 
self out of life. G-od wants you to live here 
until you are fit to live somewhere else. 

Don't jump out of the frying-pan into the 
fire! 



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